Personale docente

Education
Stefania Abbruzzetti (SA) graduated cum laude in Physics at the University of Parma. She obtained her PhD in Physics from the same Institution on 11th January 2002. At the University of Parma, she also received a Materials Science and Technology Specialization (50/50 cum laude) and a Specialization in Maths and Physics Teaching..

Training and professional experience
1997-1998: Scholarship of National Institute of Matter Physics.
1998-2001: PhD course in Physics, supervisor Prof. P.R. Crippa, “Primary events in protein folding and conformational changes in proteins and model systems studied by fast techniques based on nanosecond pulsed lasers”
2001-2003: In 2001, she was appointed a permanent professorship in maths and science in a secondary school in Piacenza, Italy.
2003- until October 2011: SA was on leave from the secondary school because she has held post-doctoral fellowships at the University of Parma (Physics Department).
November 2011- February 2015: researcher at the Department of Physics and earth Sciences, University of Parma.
March 2015- until now: professor in Applied Physics at the Life Sciences Department, University of Parma.
Her teaching activity (from 1997 to now) includes several courses both of introductory and applied Physics, physics instrumentation and data analysis, biophysics. She has been supervisor of several students and PhD students.

Editorial activities
June 2014 – January 2015: guest editor of a “Themed issue on Photofunctional Proteins” for Photochemical & Photobiological Sciences of the Royal Society of Chemistry, published on February 2015.
She is referee for some international journals, such as Journal of Physical Chemistry B, Chemical Physics Letters, Photochemical and Photobiological Sciences, IUBMB Life, Nanotechnology.

Relevant achievements
She has given several oral talks, four of which were invited lectures:
XV National Conference of Italian Society of Pure and Applied Biophysics, Parma, Italy (23-25 October 2000): “Working on tertiary and quaternary states of haemoglobin encapsulated in silica gels”
XC National Meeting of the Italian Physics Society, Brescia, Italy (20-25 September 2004): “Kinetic of acid induced changes at the GFPmut2 chromophore by a laser pH jump method”
XCIII National Meeting of the Italian Physics Society, Pisa, Italy (24-29 September 2007) ”The intricate relationship between structure, ligand migration and protein function in two nonsymbiotic hexacoordinated hemoglobins of Arabidopsis thaliana”.
XCVII National Meeting of the Italian Physics Society, L’Aquila, Italy (26-30 September 2011): “Tuning of ligand migration pathways by aromatic residues in heme proteins”

International Awards
She is co-author of a communication, which has been awarded as the best IICVCB2005 (International Interdisciplinary Conference on Vitamins, Coenzymes and Biofactors) poster presentation (Osaka, 2005): “Catalytic mechanism of cysteine desulfhydrase from synechocystis: a pre-steady state kinetic study”.

National Awards
Her degree dissertation won an award (Antonio Borsellino Award) from the Italian Society of Pure and Applied Biophysics as the best thesis discussed in biophysics between 1994 and 1996 in Italy.
She is co-author of a paper that has been selected in the Highlights 2002 of the National Institute of Matter Physics: Librizzi, F. et al. (Journal of Chemical Physics, 2002, 116, 3, 1193-1200)
Her oral talk at SIF Conference in Trento (2017) has been awarded as one of the best communication in Biophysics.

Projects
She coordinates the project "Protein based carrier for tumor PDT" granted to the University of Parma by Fondazione di Piacenza e Vigevano (2017-2019).

Partecipation to research projects
“Special project” (PAIS 1997) of the Section B of the National Institute for the Physics of Matter “Ultrarapid photoinduced pH jump and structural volume changes in folding and unfolding of homopolypeptides and proteins”.
“Strategic project on Biosensors”, (1998-2001) granted by CNR in order to study photoactivatable compounds.
COFIN2001, granted by MIUR, “Folding of (mini)hemoproteins in solution and incapsulated in sol-gel”.
“Special project” (PAIS 2002), of the Section B of the National Institute for the Physics of Matter in order to characterize photoactivatable caged compounds.
Project FIRB (2003-2005)about “Molecular and biomecular nanostructures”.
EC Project (2204-2006) within the 6th Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration, coordinated by Prof. Kenneth Lowe, University of Nottingham, about “Genomics and Blood Substitutes for 21st Century Europe”.
COFIN2004 “Structural and functional features of nonsymbiotic hemoglobins from Arabidopsis thaliana” granted by MIUR.
PRIN 2006, “Spectroscopic characterization of GFPmut2 and mutants in solution and in silica gel, in native and denaturant conditions” granted by MIUR.
PRIN 2008, “Le relazioni tra struttura, dinamica e funzione nelle proteine: indagine sui meccanismi molecolari di un'emoglobina batterica” granted by MIUR.
Vigoni 2009 “Mechanism of the Release of Nitric Oxide from the Cell Surface Binding Ferriheme Protein Nitrophorin” granted by MIUR, Ateneo Italo-Tedesco and Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD).
Vigoni 2011“Fine-tuning of the photobiophysics of photoreceptor proteins for applications in high resolution fluorescence microscopy and optogenetics” granted by MIUR, Ateneo Italo-Tedesco and Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD).
Progetti di Grande rilevanza Italia-Argentina “Il ruolo delle emoglobine nella rimozionedelle specie reattive dell’ossigeno e dell’azoto” granted by MAE and Secretaría de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación Productiva (MINCYT)
Azioni Integrate Italia-Spagna 2009: “Mapping ligand migration through hydrophobic cavities in non symbiotic hemoglobins from Arabidopsis thaliana”

Organization of International Conference
She was a member of the organizing committee of:
2006: “International visions on blood substitutes, Hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers: from chemistry to clinic”, Parma, September 17th -20th 2006
2008: “New challenges in protein science. A symposium in honor of W.A. Eaton”, Parma, June 4 th -6 th 2008.
2009: XII ISBS International Symposium on Blood substitutes, 25-28th August 2009, Parma
2012: XVII International meeting “Oxygen binding and sensing proteins”(O2BiP), Parma 29/8 - 1/9/2012.

Research acitivity
The research activity is focused on the development and application of methodologies based on nanosecond pulsed lasers to investigate in general photophysical processes and in particular the dynamics of protein structural changes. This broad field encompasses both structural events involved in protein folding and structural changes associated with protein function.
SA has actively contributed to develop an experimental method to introduce fast changes in proton concentration in solution. The integrated use of photoactivatable (caged) compounds and nanosecond laser flash photolysis has allowed to obtain large pH jumps on the nanosecond time scale, stable for several seconds, that allowed for investigating micro- and nanosecond events in proteins.
Principal interests:
- fluorescent probes to visualize intracellular processes with further developments of the technique foreseen in single molecule and in vivo.
- the use of a photochemical trigger to study the functional dynamics and fundamental properties as allosteric mechanisms, ligand migration, structural relaxation and reactivity of hemoproteins.
- photochromic proteins and bacterical photoreceptors for super resolution microscopy
- photosensitizers for antimicrobial and tumor photodynamic therapy
SA’s research activity had allowed her to acquire an in depth knowledge of time resolved techniques - photothermal methods as time resolved photoacoustics, and optical methods as laser flash photolysis with transient absorption and fluorescence emission detection – fluorescence correlation spectroscopy and numerical data analysis. These methods allow to investigate light induced reactions, which include also photochemical rearrangements of autofluorescent protein chromophores and, more generally, other photochemical reaction intermediates with different chromophoric properties.