Alessandra Operamolla

Alessandra Operamolla received a Ph.D. in Chemistry of Innovative Materials in 2009 from the University of Bari, under the supervision of Prof. Francesco Babudri. She was a post-doctoral fellow between 2009 and 2015 at the Chemistry Department, in the research group of Prof. Gianluca Farinola. She visited the Linz Institute for Organic Solar Cells (LIOS), Austria, in 2008 and 2010, where she worked under the supervision of Prof. N. S. Sariciftci. In 2010 she received an exchange grant from the European Science Foundation. After a brief period at the Pharmacy Department of the University of Bari, in 2016 she won a competitive grant financed by Regione Puglia and was appointed Assistant Professor of Organic Chemistry at the Chemistry Department, where she started independent research on cellulose nanomaterials. From December 2019 she moved to the Chemistry and Industrial Chemistry Department of the University of Pisa, where she was appointed Associate Professor of Organic Chemistry.
Prof. Operamolla is an Organic Chemist, whose research interests are focused on organometallic cross-coupling methodologies for the synthesis of organic semiconductors, both small molecules, and macromolecular materials. She has designed new multidentate thiols for self-assembling and molecular electronics. She has studied, independently and in collaboration with Italian companies, new strategies for the synthesis of thiophene-based materials for solar cells. After that, she moved her interest to organic-biologic hybrids for the chemical manipulations of photosynthesis.
Presently, she leads the NanoLeaves group, focusing on the functionalization of nanocrystalline cellulose for several technological applications, and is interested in the application of Nature-derived biopolymers as innovative materials.