Francesca Serra joined the Physics and Astronomy department at Johns Hopkins University in 2016. She obtained her BA and Masters degree from the University of Parma (Italy) and her PhD from the University of Cambridge (UK). She was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Milan (Italy) and at the University of Pennsylvania.

She is a soft matter experimentalist and her research is focused on liquid crystals. This phase of matter intermediate between liquid and solid is familiar to all of us for its use in liquid crystal displays. However, while liquid crystals in displays are usually "well-behaved" ordered fluids, interesting properties emerge when these materials are under confinement and forced to form topological defects. Francesca Serra is interested in studying liquid crystal topological defects in terms of their optical properties and their interaction with living cells.