Scheda Membro del Direttivo

Alessandro D'Urso
(Divisione di Chimica dei Sistemi Biologici)
VICE-COORDINATORE

Dipartimento di Scienze Chimiche
Università degli Studi di Catania
adurso@unict.it

Dr. Alessandro D’Urso is a researcher at Dipartimento di Scienze Chimiche of Università degli Studi di Catania. His research activity is mainly focused on “Interactions of water-soluble porphyrinoids with biomolecules, as inhibitors of proteasome and as chiroptical reporters of nucleic acids conformations (Z-DNA, G-Quadruplex...)”. He got the PhD in Chemistry in 2010 at Dipartimento di Scienze Chimiche of Università degli Studi di Catania under the supervision of Prof. Roberto Purrello with project: “Hierarchy in the self-assembly of supramolecular multicomponent systems”. In 2009 he was a visiting scholar at the Chemistry Department of the University of Wyoming (Supervisor: Prof. Milan Balaz) working on chiroptical sensors for Z-DNA. In 2010 he was invited as a research assistant at the Chemistry Department of Doane College (Professor Andrea Holmes). Then in 2012 he has been a Postdoctoral Research Scientist at Columbia University, Chemistry Department in the lab. of Prof. Koji Nakanishi and Prof. Nina Berova working on “stereochemical studies on the interactions between metalloporphyrin sensors and DNA oligonucleotides. In 2012 he got national grant FIRB 2012 (RBFR12WB3W) as principal investigator, with the project ”Spectroscopic and Structural Characterization of Proteasoma Inhibitors”. He has been awarded with “SPP/JPP Young Investigator Award 2016”, with “Best Poster Award at 14th International Conference on Chiroptical Spectroscopy 2013 in Nashville, USA” and he was one of runners up for Reaxys PhD Prize 2010. He is author of over 39 papers published in international peer-reviewed journals and he counts about 500 citations (h-index = 12). He is titular in “General Chemistry” for the BSc course in Food Science and Technology, and in “Supramolecular chemistry” for MSc course in Material Chemistry. Since 2012 he belongs to the Guidance team of the Reaxys Club. Since 2013 he joined the board of directors of Young Group of Italian Chemical Society representing the division of Chemistry of Biological Systems.