Personale docente

Francesco Di Renzo is associate professor of Theoretical Physics at the Department of Mathematical, Physical and Computer Sciences of the University of Parma.

He graduated in Physics with honors from the University of Parma, where he then obtained his PhD. After being Research Associate at the Department of Mathematical Science of the University of Liverpool and PostDoc (assegnista di ricerca) at the University of Parma, since late 2001 he was assistant professor (ricercatore universitario) at UNIPR, where (since late 2016) he is now associate professor.

He has been a member of the Doctoral Studies Committee in Physics since 2000. He is currently supervisor of 3 PhD students.

He holds a research appointment (incarico di ricerca) from the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN). After being the scientific coordinator of the Research Project (i.s.) MI11 (Lattice Field Theory and Computational Particle Physics) for many years, he is currently the local coordinator of the i.s. QCDLAT.

He has participated in three projects funded within PRIN programs, twice holding the role of scientific coordinator of research unit.

He was the scientist in charge of the Parma unit in STRONGnet, the European ITN research network financed within the European Research and Innovation Program FP7. Since 2019 he has been the scientific coordinator of EuroPLEx, a European ITN research network funded (with a contribution of more than 4 million euros) within the European Research and Innovation Program H2020.

He was a member of the organizing committee of the VII (2014) and VIII (2016) edition of the Parma International School of Theoretical Physics and of the AuroraScience school of Computational Theoretical Physics (held at the ECT* of Trento in 2010). He was a member of the organizing committee of workshops and conferences (XXIII Convegno Nazionale di Fisica Teorica di Cortona, STRONGnet2011, STRONGnet2013, EuroPLEx2019). He was invited/keynote speaker at several workshops/conferences (in recent times xQCD2014 in StonyBrook, "Rethinking Quantum Field Theory" DESY Theory Workshop 2016, "Resurgence in Gauge and String Theory" KITP Santa Barbara 2017)

He has taken part in numerous visit/research programs at institutions such as CERN, MIT in Boston (Bruno Rossi program), GGI in Florence, KITP in Santa Barbara, Aspen Center, Centro de Ciencias de Benasque.

He acts as a referee for numerous journals (Nuclear Physics B, Physical Review D, Physical Review Letters, JHEP, EPJC). He acts as a reviewer of research projects on behalf of the STFC (UK Science & Technology Facilities Council; PPGP / Particle Physics and DiRAC / HPC programs) and on behalf of the Irish Research Council (Physical Sciences and Engineering).

Part of his research activities are dedicated to the development of new high-performance computing architectures. He was a member of the apeNEXT collaboration and of INFN SUMA (SUper MAssive computing project); he has been scientific coordinator for INFN of the AuroScience project. He is Italian representative on the board of the International Lattice Data Grid and of the ILGD board he has been chairman for two years. He is currently a member of the scientific committee of the UNIPR high-performance computing service.

His main research interests are in the physics of fundamental interactions, and in particular in the lattice formulation of quantum field theories. He has great interest in computational physics, from the more traditional algorithmic aspects up to the most recent applications of artificial intelligence techniques to theoretical physics.