Eleonora Cara graduated in Physics from the University of Turin in 2015 and obtained her PhD in Metrology cum laude from the Polytechnic University of Turin in 2019. Her doctoral research focused on the fabrication of self-assembled three-dimensional plasmonic nanostructures for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), combining macromolecular self-assembly with chemical etching techniques. During her PhD, she spent six months as a visiting researcher at the German National Metrology Institute (PTB), where she worked in the X-ray Spectrometry Group at the BESSY II synchrotron on reference-free X-ray fluorescence for quantitative mass determination.

She is currently a Technologist at INRiM, the Italian National Metrology Institute, where she is involved in the management of the PiQuET infrastructure and conducts research within the Advanced Materials and Devices Group.

Her research activity has focused on the fabrication of micro- and nanostructured materials using self-assembly, conventional lithography, and physical and chemical vapor deposition techniques. These materials have been developed for applications in plasmonics, optics, thermoelectrics, gas sensing, and as reference materials for X-ray spectroscopy, electron and scanning probe microscopy, and thermal transport measurements. Alongside materials fabrication, she works on their characterization using a correlative metrology approach that combines dimensional, structural, and chemical analyses. Her expertise includes SEM-FIB, AFM, EDX, XPS, XRF, SAXS, spectroscopic ellipsometry, and laboratory- and synchrotron-based X-ray techniques.

A significant part of her research has been devoted to plasmonic sensing. In recent years, her work has focused on integrating porous adsorbing materials, including metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), covalent organic frameworks (COFs), and porous organic polymers, with SEIRA platforms for gas capture and molecular sensing.

She has co-authored more than 25 papers and 1 patent. She has received two Young Researcher Awards at the EMRS bi-annual meeting.

2023

2022

2021