Optica Ambassador
Class of 2024
Lifetime title.
Optica Ambassadors provide career advice, technical knowledge and mentorship with students and early career professionals in the field by supporting professional development events at meetings and engaging with their communities.
Joining our mentoring program is a great way to progress your career by getting help and guidance from others or expanding your support and leadership abilities by helping others grow. Find us on Mentorloop!
DEI Committee
Postdoc Representative
2023-2024
Chiara Trovatello selected as postdoc representative on the Mechanical Engineering Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Committee of Columbia University.
Optica Chapter of Milan
Chapter Advisor
2025-present
Founder and Former President
2019-2021
Chapters are associations of young students and researchers, promoting the dissemination of knowledge in science. Our student chapter in Milan was founded in 2019 with the mission to disseminate knowledge in photonics and nanotechnology, and connect students of Engineering Physics of Politecnico di Milano with real-world scientists.
Learn more: website.
Outreach and community engagement events
[2024/11] Women in STEM Podcast with Dr. Hannah Roberts
Chiara Trovatello is featured in Episode 56 of “Women in STEM” Podcast by Dr. Hannah Roberts. We discussed the importance of trying out new opportunities before committing to them long-term (e.g. moving countries), how our Pusher part gets driven by the need to avoid failure so can result in overcompensating with overworking, and also separating your career from your identity, ensuring that successes and failures such as winning grants are not attached to your self-worth.
Listed to the episode on: iTunes, Spotify, Website.
[2024/11] Host and speaker of the workshop “How to navigate work-life balance in Academia”
Organized in collaboration with the Optica Student Chapter of Milan, Optica Ambassador Chiara Trovatello served as host and speaker of the workshop entitled “How to navigate work-life balance in Academia”, discussing important pillars such as “Setting boundaries”, “Time management” and “Stress management”.
[2024/05] Mentor at the Optica Women Scholars Conference
Charlotte (NC, USA) was home to the first Optica Women Scholars Conference, preceding CLEO 2024. As Optica Ambassador, Chiara Trovatello served as mentor during the Quick-Fire Mentoring session, together with Janet Fender, Keeley Hurley, Ursula Keller, Michal Lipson, Jie Qiao, Rebecca Richards-Kortum, Elizabeth Rogan and Gabrielle Thomas. Read more: “Standing in our potential” by Janet Fender.
[2022/07] Speaker at the Career Luncheon with Optica and Coherent Inc.
As representatives of innovative researchers in the field, David Carlson and Chiara Trovatello, winners of the Bernard J. Couillaud Prize in 2019 and 2022, respectively, shared their background, research and excitement for the future of field related to research and applications. Their talk was followed my a networking session with PhD, postdocs and early careers present at the Luncheon.
[2022/05] Speaker at BergamoScienza “La (s)carica dei 101 watt. Tra batterie e transizione ecologica” (ITA)
[2022/02] Speaker of “Physics Talks”
PhysicsTalks is a new format aiming at connecting the students of Engineering Physics from Politecnico di Milano with Physics Engineers, who share their professional and personal life experience, and hopefully inspire the students for their future careers. For the kick-off event the Polimi Chapters hosted Chiara Trovatello, founder and former president of the chapter, to share her experience in the field of Academic research.
[2021] Speaker at CARLA Photonic Camp “My Career in Photonics”, Virtual | ICFO, Barcelona, Spain
[2021/06] Co-organizer of the webinar “LBGTQ+ in Science“
In collaboration with the LGBTQIA+ association of Polimi (Poliedro), Chiara Trovatello co-organized a Webinar entitled “LGBTQ+ in Science”. The webinar hosted Alfredo Carpineti (UK), astrophysicist and founder of Pride in STEM, Sonia Zuin (IT), contract teacher at Polimi, and Lietsel Richardson (US), member of “500 queer scientist” and “black in neuro”, who discussed discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation, and how such issues are faced in Academia today.
[2021/04] Organizer and moderator of the roundtable “Women in Science: from Academia to Industry”
Four great scientists (Roberta Ramponi, Gabrielle Thomas, Francesca Calegari and Donatella Sciuto) shared their lives and careers in the form of a roundtable that I moderated. The webinar discussed about gander pay gap, stereotypes, maternity and paternity leave, EU statistics and offered perspectives on how to contrast systematic discrimination and bias towards women working in STEM fields.
[2020/09] Co-organizer of the webinar on research ethics “Is Science Dead?!“
What is the direction of research? What does Ethics mean for scientists? How do editorial boards account for Ethics in the publication system? A webinar on Research Ethics, discussing ethics of scientists, ethics of editors and ethics of journalists with three worldwide experts in the topic. We talked about some of the issues when reporting and communicating science with Dr. Elisabeth Bik, Prof. Stephen Burns and Dr. Laura Helmuth, who shared their experience and discussed with us the limitations and flaws of the current reporting system and how to tackle such limitations.
[2020] Podcast on Scientificast: “Polpi corazzati bidimensionali” (ITA)
[2019/06] Co-organizer of the Career Event “Options after your PhD” at CLEO 2019
Figuring out a career path after your PhD (or any other point during your studies) is the hardest task every student has to face, especially approaching the end of their studies. And the unescapable question is always: “What should I do next?”. This encouraged Chiara Trovatello and Araceli Venegas Gomez, on behalf of EPS Young Minds, to organize the Career Event at the CLEO conference in Munich.
In the form of a discussion panel, young scientists had the opportunity to engage with six different invited speakers, both from Academia and Industry: Thierry Botter, Hannieh Fattahi, Wilhelm Kaenders, Gregory Quarles, Clara Saraceno and Gabrielle Thomas. The room was completely full, and the audience was impressively engaged. Read the full article here.
[2018] Podcast on Scientificast: “I premiati e gli screanzati” (ITA)
Advocating for Scientific Outreach,
Open Science, Equal Opportunities and
Equal Representation in STEM.
Wanna make an inquiry or discuss new ideas?
Your message has been sent
Chiara Trovatello 