Staff

Alberto Credi was born in Bologna in 1970. He graduated in Chemistry cum laude from the University of Bologna in 1994, discussing a thesis on the photophysical, photochemical and electrochemical characterization of catenanes and their components. After a year of scholarship awarded by Ciba-Geigy S.p.A., he spent a training period at the University of Virginia (USA) as part of the NATO "Supramolecular chemistry" special program, dealing with circularly polarized luminescence of metal complexes. Back in Bologna, he began the PhD course in Chemical Sciences under the supervision of prof. Vincenzo Balzani and obtained his doctoral degree in 1999 with a thesis entitled “Molecular-Level Machines and Logic Gates”. After a short period as a technical associate, in October 1999 he started as an assistant professor in General and Inorganic Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry “G. Ciamician ” of the University of Bologna. In 2005 he was appointed associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and tenured in 2008. Since 2016 he has been full professor in General and Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Bologna, first at the Department of Agro-Food Sciences and Technologies and, from October 2019, at the Department of Industrial Chemistry "Toso Montanari". From 2021 to 2024 he has been the Vice Rector for Research of the University of Bologna.

He is also associate research director at the Institute for Organic Synthesis and Photoreactivity of CNR. In 2017 he founded the Center for Light Activated Nanostructures (CLAN), a joint research laboratory between the University and CNR, of which he is the Scientific Director. He has been scientific lead in numerous national and European projects, and was the Principal Investigator of an Advanced Grant ERC (2016-2023). For his research activity he has received numerous awards, including the IUPAC Prize for young chemists, the international Grammaticakis-Neumann prize for photochemistry, the Caglioti prize of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, the Nasini prize of the Italian Chemical Society, the Netherlands Scholar Award for Supramolecular Chemistry and the French-Italian Prize of the Société Chimique de France. He was the president of the Italian Photochemistry Group and member of the executive committee of the European Photochemistry Association, Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and member of the European Academy of Sciences.

He has published about 330 scientific articles, with more than 32,000 citations (h = 77), three monographs, two popular science books and one chemistry textbook. He has been invited to speak at over 120 national and international conferences, and has held seminars in more than 80 institutes and research centers. Since the beginning of his career he has been engaged in the popularization of chemistry and science in general at schools and public events.

Vincenzo Palermo is the director of the Institute of Organic Synthesis and Photoreactivity of CNR (ISOF) at the Department of Chemical Sciences and Materials Technologies (DSCTM), where he is the head of the Nanochemistry Laboratory, and is an associate professor at Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden). His research interests are focused on the development of new materials for electronics and photovoltaics, and on their analysis at the nanoscale using probe microscopy techniques.

He has published dozens of articles in international journals in the field of chemistry, nanotechnology and materials science. He has been and is the coordinator of numerous research projects dedicated to the development of graphene-based composite materials; he was one of the nine coordinators of the European project Graphene Flagship. In 2012 he received the "FEMS Lecturer Award" of the European Federation of Materials Societies (FEMS), and in 2013 he was awarded with the Prize of the Italian Society of Italian Chemistry for mechanistic and theoretical aspects in Organic Chemistry. He is an expert science popularizer and he wrote books on the life and science of Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton.

Sebastián Barata-Vallejo was born in General Villegas (Argentina) and holds degrees in Pharmacy (2007) and Biochemistry (2010). He obtained his Ph.D.degree (2012) at the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina), studying radical reactions in aqueous and microheterogeneous media under the supervision of Prof. A. Postigo. He has been a research fellow and held several postdoctoral positions at the Istituto per la Sintesi Organica e la Fotoreattività (ISOF), Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Bologna, Italy, under the supervision of Dr. C. Chatgilialoglu, studying biomimetic radical reactions and their mechanisms. He is currently a Researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technical Investigation, CONICET (Argentina), Research Associate at ISOF-CNR (Italy) and Lecturer at the Chemical Sciences Department, Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry, University of Buenos Aires. He is author and co-author of more than 40 scientific papers and book chapters. His research activities focus on radical organic chemistry, in particular carbon- and sulfur-centered radicals reactivity, fluoroalkylation reactions by radical pathways, biomimetic chemistry and photocatalysis in water and nonconventional media.

Massimo Baroncini received his laurea in Chemistry cum laude from the University of Bologna in 2006 under the supervision of prof. Vincenzo Balzani and his  Ph.D. in 2010 under the supervision of prof. Margherita Venturi. His Ph.D. dissertation was awarded with the Springer Thesis Prize in 2010. Between 2018 and 2021 he was a Fixed-term Junior Assistant Professor at the Department of Agricultural and Food Sciences of the University of Bologna, where he is now Associate Professor. He is author and co-author of more than 40 scientific papers and book chapters. His research activity focuses on synthesis and investigation of supramolecular systems with tailored physico-chemical functionalities.

Giacomo Bergamini (born 1979) got his laurea (cum laude) in chemistry at the University of Bologna in 2003, defending a thesis on photophysical and electrochemical characterization of dendrimers, advisor Prof. Vincenzo Balzani. In the 2007 he got the PhD in Chemical Sciences at the University of Bologna, working under the supervision of Prof. Vincenzo Balzani in the field of design and characterization of supramolecular systems.

He was a visiting scientist, for six months, in the laboratory “Photochemistry and Spectroscopy” of Prof. Frans De Schryver at the Katolieke Universiteit of Leuven (Belgium), financially supported by a grant from “Marco Polo” programme. From January  2007 to October 2011, he recevied a research fellowship to work at the Photochemistry and Supramolecular Chemistry group, directed by Prof. Vincenzo Balzani, in the Department of Chemistry “G. Ciamician”. From November 2011 to March 2016, he was “Ricercatore a Tempo Determinato tipo a” and since April 2016 is "Ricercatore a tempo determinato tipo b" at the University of Bologna, Department of Chemistry “G. Ciamician”. He was a lecturer of the “Supramolecular Photochemistry” course, second-level degree “Fotochimica e Materiali Molecolari”, University of Bologna, academic year 2010-2011. From 2012, lecturer of the “Applied Photochemistry and Photophysic” course second-level degree “Fotochimica e Materiali Molecolari”, University of Bologna.

He has published more than 70 research papers published on international journal, 6 of which are review articles, and 3 book chapters. He attended more than 30 national and  international conferences with oral or poster presentations (in particular oral presentations at: “5th International Dendrimer Symposium (IDS-5)” Toulouse, France and “XIInd IUPAC Symposium on Photochemistry” Gothenburg, Sweden); “3rd EuChems Chemistry Congress” Nuremberg, Germany.

Giacomo is also the Project Coordinator of a Marie Curie ITN Project, PHOTOTRAIN

Andrea Candini was born in Modena in 1979. He graduated in Physics cum laude at the University of Modena e Reggio Emilia where he also received his PhD in 2007, working on the development of innovative experimental techniques to characterize magnetic molecules. Since 2008 he developed his independent activity using graphene as a material platform to couple with other low-dimensional systems (molecules, 2D materials, organic compounds ecc...), spending a short stage (6 months, 2008) at NEST institute, Pisa and 2 years at CNRS Grenoble (France) in the group of Dr. Wolfgang Wernsdorfer (2009-2010). In 2011 he has been awarded of the NEST national prize for young researcher working in nanoscience and in 2014 of the FIRB grant “Future in Research” funded by the Italian ministry of research. Since 2017 he holds a permanent position at ISOF-CNR where he is head of the Advanced Microscopy and Scanning Probes Laboratory. His current research activities are focused on the characterization of morphological, electrical and optical properties of two dimensional materials and nano structured (molecular) systems.  He authored > 60 publications in international journals and delivered > 10 invited presentations. Researcher ID: B-8521-2015; ORCID:0000-0003-3909-473X.

Francesca Di Maria graduated in Chemistry at the University of Catania and received her PhD in Chemical Sciences in 2016 from University of Bologna with a dissertation titled “Molecular and Supramolecular Engineering of Thiophene Based Materials for Application in Organic Electronics and Bioimaging”. Since 2019 she is permanent researcher at CNR-ISOF in Bologna. Her present research interests are focused on the synthesis and characterization of thiophene-based materials and their organization into supramolecular nanostructures (0D, 1D) for application in optoelectronics, photonics and biological systems. She is co-author of more than 40 articles and 2 book chapters published on top level international journals. She participated in different conference proceedings, held invited talks at international summer school, and for academic PhD programs. She has been supervisor and co-supervisor of more than 15 graduated and PhD students.

Jessica received her Masters degree in Chemistry in 2010 at Università degli Studi di Parma. In 2016, she completed her PhD at Queen Mary University of London (UK), working on the controlled modification of electrode surfaces through solid phase synthesis, for the development of glucose biosensors. Jessica joined the Clan laboratory as a post-doctoral fellow at Università di Bologna in 2016 and later as a post-doctoral associate at the ISOF-CNR Institute. Since December 2021 she has been tenured researcher at the ISOF-CNR institute in Bologna. Her research currently involves the synthesis and characterization of functional molecular and supramolecular systems.

Serena received her degree in Chemistry cum laude in 2002 from the University of Bologna, where she also earned her PhD in 2006 under the supervision of Prof. Alberto Credi. Since 2008 she is assistant professor in general and inorganic chemistry at the Department of Chemistry ‘‘Giacomo Ciamician’’ of the University of Bologna. Her research interests are focussed on photochemical and electrochemical investigation of complex molecular and supramolecular systems, exploited as molecular components for artificial molecular machines or systems for information processing. She is coauthor of more than 100 scientific papers, reviews and book chapters.

Mattia Zangoli was born in Rimini in 1986. He earned a MSc and a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Bologna, and he received the "Spada" award for the best doctoral thesis in inorganic chemistry. In 2019 he became a permanent researcher at the Institute for Organic Synthesis and Photoreactivity of the CNR in Bologna. His scientific interests include the synthesis and design of conjugated materials, in particular thiophene-based, and their organization in organized nano- and micro-structures.