Stefano Ciurli has been Full Professor of General and Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Bologna since 2001. His scientific activity is carried out in the field of bioinorganic chemistry and the chemistry of metals in biological systems, with particular attention to the role of metal ions in biomolecules, to the structure and function of metalloproteins, and to the molecular mechanisms that regulate metal-dependent biological processes. His research path has developed from coordination and organometallic chemistry to inorganic biochemistry, integrating chemical, structural, and biophysical expertise.
The research of his group is focused on the study of metalloenzymes and proteins involved in metal homeostasis, with particular reference to nickel metabolism, urease maturation, intracellular trafficking of metal ions, and metal-dependent transcription factors in environmental and pathogenic bacteria. A well-established line of research concerns the structural and biochemical characterization of urease and its inhibitors, with potential implications in the biomedical, environmental, and agri-biotechnological fields.
The experimental approach combines structural biology, biochemistry, and molecular modeling. Metallobiomolecules are obtained from natural sources or by means of recombinant DNA techniques and studied using high-resolution NMR spectroscopy, X-ray crystallography, circular dichroism, fluorescence, small-angle X-ray scattering, and calorimetry.
He graduated with honors in Chemistry from the University of Pisa in 1986, after a period of research at Columbia University in New York, and obtained a Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry from Harvard University in 1990. After postdoctoral work at the University of Bologna, he was Associate Professor from 1992 to 2001. He served as Visiting Professor at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil and was Research Fellow at Johannes Kepler University in Linz in 2025.
Since 1992, he has been engaged in teaching in the fields of general and inorganic chemistry, bioinorganic chemistry, and biomolecular NMR spectroscopy. He is the author of more than 200 international scientific publications and, since 2022, has been Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry (Elsevier).
