DE LUCA Giovanna

Prof. De Luca graduated in Chemistry in 2002 (magna cum laude) at the University of Messina, where she also got her PhD in Chemical Sciences (2006). After some post-doc positions, she became a permanent researcher at the CNR - IMCB (2009-11). In 2011, she became a permanent researcher at the University of Messina. Since 2024, she has been a Full Professor of General and Inorganic Chemistry at the same University.
Her scientific activity has been disseminated through the publication of more than 70 papers in international, peer-reviewed journals and through more than 80 contributions to national and international conferences. Prof. De Luca has been invited as Visiting Researcher and Visiting Professor at the Institut de Science et d'Ingénierie Supramoléculaires - University of Strasbourg, and as Visiting Researcher at Swarthmore College, Swarthmore (PA-USA). Prof. De Luca's scientific activity includes studies on the supramolecular chemistry of porphyrins, both in solution and at surfaces, using various spectroscopies (UV/vis absorption, fluorescence, circular dichroism, resonance light scattering) and microscopies (optical-, secondary electron, and scanning probe microscopies). She has studied the optical activity of supramolecular assemblies of dyes in the presence of chiral templates, as well as the chiral amplification in fractal porphyrin aggregates. She has also been involved in the investigation of the self-assembly behavior of functional materials on surfaces, with a particular focus on devising new post-processing protocols to improve the degree of order of deposited supramolecular architectures going from the nano to the microscale. Lately, Prof. De Luca has been interested in the formation of nanohybrids through the coupling of low-dimensional, inorganic nanostructures (nano-spheres, -rods, -tubes, -sheets) with functional organic materials, aiming at applications in nano- and bio-technology, sensing, optoelectronics, photonics, and material science.