Laura Baldini

Laura Baldini was born in 1974, obtained her Chemistry degree (cum laude) from the University of Parma in 1998 and the PhD in Chemistry from the same University in 2002.
In 1998 (February - May) she did research work in the group of prof. K. Rissanen at the Chemistry Department of Jyväskylä University (Finland), in 2000-2001 (October - April) she worked as a PhD visiting student in the group of prof. Christopher A. Hunter at the Chemistry Department of the Univerity of Sheffield (U.K.) and from August 2002 to December 2003 she was a Postdoctoral Associate in the group of prof. Andrew D. Hamilton at the Chemistry Department of Yale University (New Haven, CT, U.S.A.). Since November 2005 she is a researcher at the Dipartimento di Chimica Organica e Industriale of Università di Parma (S.S.D. Chim/06) and since March 2015 she is Associate Professor at the Dipartimento di Scienze Chimiche, della Vita e della Sostenibilità Ambientale of the same University.
Dr. Baldini is author of more than 40 articles on international peer-revewed journals and book chapters, and of oral communications and posters at national and international conferences. She has been a member of the Organising Committee of the IX National Conference on Supramolecular Chemistry which was held in Parma (6-9 September 2009).
Dr. Laura Baldini’s research activity has been devoted to Supramolecular Chemistry and has dealt with the synthesis of calixarenes (phenol-formaldehyde macrocycles) and porphyrins, their chemical functionalization and the study of their ability to recognise specific substrates.
Selective receptors for alkaline-earth and for lanthanide and actinide cations have been obtained by functionalizing calix[n]arenes with appropriate groups and their complexes have been studied as catalysts for trans-acylation reactions, as luminescent devices, and as systems for the purification of nuclear wastes. Calixarenes functionalized with porphyrins or small peptides have been studied as self-assembling systems for the formation of dimeric capsules or oligomeric systems with a well-defined architecture.
Dr. Baldini has also designed and synthesized calixarenes and porphyrins functionalized with natural and biologically relevant molecules, with the aim of obtaining molecular receptors of biological or pharmaceutical interest. In particular, calixarenes conjugated with amino acids, peptides, sugars and guanidinium moieties have been studied as selective receptors for small organic anions, amino acids, or biological macromolecules such as proteins (like lectins, cholera toxin, or PDGF and VEGF growth factors) or DNA, thus obtaining non-viral vectors for gene therapy. Moreover, a combinatorial library of peripherally-modified porphyrins has been developed as a protein-detecting array. Finally, multivalent aminocalix[4]arenes have been studied as devices for the capture and sensing of carbon dioxide.
More recently, the calixarene scaffold has been studied as a model system to obtain multichromophoric compounds useful for the study of energy and charge transfer.