Francesco Gianoli grew up in a mountain village in the Italian Alps and studied Physics at Università degli Studi di Torino. While his peers were passionate about particle Physics, Francesco found Physics in his passion for violin-making. Collaborating with his mentor, master luthier Gianfranco Dindo, he developed a novel method for guiding the construction of violin bridges. This work became the focus of his Bachelor’s thesis and of a small, accessible scientific book, “Violin-making from Art to Science”, co-authored with Dindo. The violin-making school they co-founded still thrives in his hometown.
Francesco’s fascination with acoustics led him to the biophysics of hearing and to a PhD at Imperial College London with Prof. Andriy S. Kozlov. There, he developed a new model of auditory mechanotransduction that addressed a long-lasting problem in the field and which first incorporated the functional role of lipids in auditory mechanosensation. Moving from theory to experimentation, Francesco then pioneered an innovative technique to stimulate hair cells, the sensory receptors of the ear, at previously inaccessible frequencies, using photonic pressure.
In 2021, Francesco joined Jim Hudspeth’s laboratory at Rockefeller University to continue his research on mammalian hearing. He is a proud member of RockOUT, striving to be a positive LGBTQ+ role model for younger scientists, visible in the community—something he wishes he had during his early career.