Pier Luigi Luisi

Current Position: Professor Emeritus at the ETHZ (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology)

Bio: Pier Luigi received his scientific education at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy. In 1970, he became professor at the Institut für Polymere at the ETH-Zürich and since 2006 he is part of the biology department of the University of Roma Tre. As a biochemist, he pioneered an active research in the self-organization of synthetic and biological systems, the origin of life, and semi-synthetic cellular systems (the so-called "mininal life"). Interested in the interface between science and humanities, in 1985 he founded Cortona week, legacy to this Todi-week, and participated, in 1987, to the foundation of Mind and Life in Dharamsala, India, with Francisco Varela and the Dalai Lama.

Reference: The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision, co-authored with Fritjof Capra, Cambridge University press, New York (2014).
The Emergence of Life: From Chemical Origins to Synthetic Biology, Cambridge University press, New York (2006).
Giant Vesicles (Perspectives in Supramolecular Chemistry), co-authored with Peter Walde, Wiley-Interscience, New York (2000).
Mind and life: discussions with the Dalai Lama on the nature of reality, co-authored with Zara Houshmand, Columbia University Press (2009).