Maria Minunni

Maria Minunni is Professor at the School of Science Department of Chemistry “Ugo Schiff”, University of Florence.

She received her BSc in Biology from the University of Pisa and the PhD in Environmental Science from the University of Florence, Italy, under the supervision of Prof. Marco Mascini.

She spent a few years abroad, working at Nestlé Research Centre (Lausanne-CH) in the Genetic Toxicology section, then at Pharmacia Biosensor AB (Uppsala–SE), at the new Biacore™ instrumentation based on Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR); at the Technical University of Munich - TUM (DE), Institute of Life Sciences with Prof. B. Hock, developing SPR based approaches for recombinant antibodies screening, at University College UCC-Cork (IE) Dep. of Chemistry with Prof. G. G. Guilbault on piezoelectric sensing. She returned to Florence working the Department of Pharmaceutical Science and then at Department of Chemistry in 1999. She supervised more than 20 MSc and 5 PhD theses. Most of her former students are now developing their academic careers in Italy and abroad. Since 2018 she’s been member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Talanta, Sensing and Bio-Sensing Research (SBSR) and Associate Editor of Sensors and Actuators Reports, Elsevier. Recently 2019 she acted as Guest Editor for Analytical Bioanalytical Chemistry (ABC), Springer, Issue New Developments in Biosensors. Since 2017 she is in the International Advisory board of the European Biosensor Symposium (ESB), chairing the 2nd EBS in Florence (2019) together with F. Baldini.

Her activity has been mainly focused on the development of bioanalytical assays, mainly on sensor and biosensing based approaches. She is mainly interested in affinity sensing, biomimetic receptors (aptamers, molecular imprinted polymers), and nanophotonic for wide range of analytical application: from molecular diagnostics, to food, antidoping analysis, drug discovery.