Ugo Molteni

Environmental Scientist, PhD

I am an environmental scientist working at the intersection of analytical chemistry, instrument development, and ecosystem research. My background is in atmospheric chemistry. I spent several years at the Paul Scherrer Institute and CERN's CLOUD experiment studying how volatile organic compounds (VOCs) oxidise to form Highly Oxygenated Organic Molecules (HOMs) and secondary organic aerosol (SOA), with field deployments at high-altitude stations including Jungfraujoch.

I design and build measurement systems, including sampling hardware, online mass spectrometers, and automated logging, then apply chemometrics to extract reliable signals from complex, high-dimensional data. MATLAB has been my primary tool for nearly twenty years, alongside Python, R, and Julia, all on Linux.

My current research combines plant VOC emissions, metabolomics of transgenerational stress responses in seedlings, and model-based studies of forest regeneration dynamics. I was awarded an SNSF Postdoc.Mobility fellowship to pursue this line of work.