Personale docente

Born in 1952 (Vigatto, Parma), Gianluca Calestani earned the Laurea degree in Chemistry from Parma University in 1976 and the PhD from the Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken, Germany. After a Postoctoral Fellow at the C.C.R. Institut für Transurane of Karlsruhe, Germany, he started his academic career in 1982 as researcher at the Istituto di Strutturistica Chimica of the University of Parma and member of the Centro di Studio per la Strutturistica Diffrattometrica del CNR. Associate Professor at the University of Bologna from 1992, in 1998 he moved to the Dipartimento di Chimica Generale ed Inorganica, Chimica Analitica e Chimica Fisica of the University of Parma, where in 2005 he was appointed full Professor in General and Inorganic Chemistry. From 2006 he was promoted associated researcher at the CNR Institut of Materials for Electronics and Magnetism (IMEM) in Parma The scientific interests of Prof. Calestani have been mainly addressed to the preparation and characterization of new materials characterized by special electric and magnetic properties, in particular superconductors, semiconductors, permanent magnets and more recently magnetoelectric multiferroic materials. In such studies, involving the structure-properties relationships, different preparation techniques, ranging from solid state reactions and sintering of ceramic materials to crystal growth from melt and vapor phase, were coupled to detailed physical and chemical characterizations measurements and to the development of interpretative models. Particular attention was devoted to the structural characterization, performed by using different diffraction techniques ranging from X-ray to neutron diffraction, from high resolution electron microscopy (HREM) to electron diffraction. The latter two techniques represent a crucial step in the development of his research work, leading to the set up of advanced electron crystallography strategies and to the solution of complex structural problems involving commensurate and incommensurate structural modulations. Further research interests are represented by the preparation of nanostructered architectures of semiconducting oxides for chemical sensing and catalysis and of materials for the removal of polluting agents (in particular NOx). Prof. Calestani is author of about 180 publications in refereed journals and of five patents extended internationally. He is member of the Associazione Italiana di Cristallografia (AIC), where he held different offices, and of the European Crystallographic Association (ECA). From 2002 to 2005 he was a member of the Commission on Inorganic and Mineral Structures of the International Union for Crystallography (IUCr).