Massimiliano Sassoli de Bianchi

Graduated in physics from the University of Lausanne (UNIL), Switzerland, in 1989. From 1990 to 1991, I was Assistant in the Department of Theoretical Physics (DPT) of the University of Geneva (UNIGE), where I studied the foundations of quantum theory with Constantin Piron. In 1992, I joined the Institute of Theoretical Physics (IPT) at the Federal Institute of Technology, in Lausanne (EPFL), as a Ph.D. candidate, and following a fruitful scientific collaboration with Ph. A. Martin, I received the Ph.D. degree in physics in 1995, with a study on time-observables in quantum scattering theory.

Since 1996, I worked as a manager in the private sector, as an independent researcher, and as an educator. In 2010, I created the Laboratorio di Autoricerca di Base (LAB), whose mission is the development and dissemination of competences and knowledge that can maximize the human potential. In 2010, I also started a scientific correspondence with Diederik Aerts, through which I reconnected with the ideas of the Geneva-Brussels school, giving life over the years to a fruitful scientific collaboration. In 2016, I joined the Center Leo Apostel for Interdisciplinary Studies (CLEA), at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), collaborating and interacting with many of its members.

My research focuses on the foundations of physical theories, quantum mechanics and quantum cognition. I’m also involved in the exploration of consciousness, mostly from a first-person experiential perspective (inner research). To date, I have published about 90 research articles and numerous books and monographs (including popular science books and children’s stories).

I was one of the organizers of the Worlds of Entanglement Symposium, held at VUB, on September 29-30, 2017, and one of CLEA’s principal investigators for QUARTZ, an innovative training network that aims to educate its early-stage researchers to adopt a novel theoretically and empirically motivated approach to Information Access and Retrieval (IAR), based on the quantum mechanical framework.

I am currently the Director of the Laboratorio di Autoricerca di Base (LAB), in Lugano, Switzerland, the Editor of the LAB’s journal AutoRicerca, and the President of the company Area 302. I’m also in the scientific committee of the BrainCircle Lugano association, created in 2019 with the aim of bringing the public, especially young people, closer to the world of research.

I’m a life member of the American Physical Society (APS), a member of the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT), of the International Quantum Structure Association (IQSA), of the International Network on Foundations of Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Information (INFQMQI), and of the Society of Scientific Exploration (SSE).