Carla Molteni

Carla Molteni (born February 1966) is an Italian Professor of Physics at King's College London. She works on computer simulations of materials and biomolecules.

Education and early career Molteni studied physics at the University of Milan. She remained there for her graduate studies.

Research and career Molteni joined Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research as a postdoctoral research fellow, working on crystalline glucose. She used the Car–Parrinello molecular dynamics method to study glucose.

Molteni joined the University of Cambridge in 1999 as an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Advanced Research Fellow. She was a fellow at New Hall, (now Murray Edwards College) Cambridge.

In 2003 Molteni was appointed a professor of soft matter physics at King's College London. She uses density functional theory and classical methods to understand systems such as grain boundaries, liquid crystals, polymers and proteins. Her group have used computational methods to evaluate the interactions of green tea with cardiac muscle and the growth of hexagonal ice. They identified the excited states of biological chromophores using many-body perturbation theory. Understanding piezochromic effects is important to determine the potential of a material for applications such as stress sensors. She serves on the board of directors of the Association of Italian Scientists in the UK. She has taken part in Pint of Science.