Stefania Abbruzzetti obtained a Master degree in Physics with honors and a PhD in Physics from the University of Parma. From the same University, she specialized in Materials Science and Technology (50/50 cum laude) and in Mathematics and Physics Teaching (79/80).
Awards
She won the Italian Society of Pure and Applied Biophysics (SIBPA) award for her master's thesis.
She co-authored a paper that was selected for the 2002 Highlights of the National Institute of Materials Physics and a paper that won best poster presentation at IICVCB2005 (Osaka, 2005).
Her presentations at the 2017 SIF Congress (Trento) and 2020 were recognized as among the best in the field of Biophysics.
She has given several oral communications, some of which were invited, at National and International Biophysics Congresses.
Research Activities
Her research activity focuses on the development and application of methodologies based on nanosecond pulsed lasers to study functional and structural dynamics of proteins and photophysical processes in general.
She has actively contributed to the development of an experimental method for introducing rapid changes in proton concentration in solution using photoactivatable (caged) compounds and nanosecond laser flash photolysis, which has enabled large pH changes on the nanosecond time scale, stable for several seconds. Other main interests include:
- photothermal methods for studyng protein dynamics and photophysical processes
- the use of a photochemical trigger to study functional dynamics and fundamental properties such as allosteric mechanisms, ligand migration, structural relaxations, and hemoprotein reactivity
- photosensitizers for antimicrobial and tumor photodynamic therapy
- photochromic proteins for super-resolution microscopy
This research activity has allowed her to acquire a deep understanding of time-resolved techniques and solid experience in the study of hemoproteins.
