Nelsi Zaccheroni graduated in Chemistry and obtained her Ph.D. in Chemical Sciences (1997) at the University of Bologna, where she is now full professor in General and Inorganic Chemistry since 2021 at the Department of Chemistry ‘G. Ciamician’. She was postdoctoral fellow within a TMR-CEE project at the University College of Dublin (Ireland) and then visiting professor in Australia and Canada. In 2003 she was among the founder partners of a company that is still active in the field of genomics and proteomics. She is also co-inventor of five patents (national or international) and her research activity is documented by numerous papers published on international journals.

Her research is focused on photochemistry and, in particular, on luminescent nanostructured materials. She is actively working on the development of luminescent colloidal systems based on nanoparticles (silica, metal and/or magnetic) and polymers (also biopolymers) for biomedical and environmental applications. Moreover, she is also working on the design and characterization of mechanochromic/mechanoluminescent polymers for sensing (of analytes but also of stress, failure, impact, etc.) and self-diagnostic applications.