Curriculum

“Federico Zappaterra is an assistant professor in industrial chemistry (CHIM/04) at the University of Ferrara (Dept. of Chemical, Pharmaceutical, and Agricultural Sciences – since 2022). His work deals with the development of biocatalytic processes to produce biomolecules, pro-drugs, and bio-based polyesters. His expertise comprises the use and optimization of eco-friendly, sustainable low-energy methods (based on enzymes) for the synthesis of active ingredients for the agri-food and pharma industries. The several solvent-free protocols developed permitted biosynthesizing optically pure molecules with enhanced activity (higher bioavailability) compared to the starting materials, also aiming for the recycling of byproducts. He is currently working on the scale-up of the developed processes. He spent part of his Ph.D. at the Complutense University of Madrid (Dept. of Chemical Engineering, Spain), in the laboratory headed by Pr Miguel Ladero, where he studied the kinetics of enzymatic esterification of biobased products. In 2021, he was a post-doctoral researcher at the Laboratory of Applied and Computational Biocatalysis of Pr Lucia Gardossi (Trieste, Italy) in which he studied the synthesis and characterization of biobased renewable chemical products."