Massimo La Deda is currently Associate Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the CTC Department and member of the Nanotec Institute of Italian National Council of Researches (CNR). He is member of the Board of Directors of the Distretto Matelios (Consortium for the development of innovative materials and technologies for the exploitation of solar and wind power).

He obtained his first degree in Chemistry at the University of Bologna in 1997: the final thesis was in Photochemistry (“Electron Transfer Kinetic Studies in Photosynthetic Reaction Centers”) under the supervision of Prof. V. Balzani and Prof. G. Venturoli. After a fellowship from INFM (National Institute of Physics of Matter), in 1999, he began his research doctorate at the University of Calabria, under the supervision of Prof. M. Ghedini, and in 2002 he obtained his PhD in Chemical Sciences with a thesis entitled "New materials containing metals for applications in light emitting diodes". From 2002 to 2004 you worked at LASCAMM (Laboratory of Synthesis and Characterization of Molecular Materials - University of Calabria) with a post-doc fellowship from the INSTM (National Institute of Materials Science and Technology). From 2005 to 2012 he was Assistant Researcher of Inorganic Chemistry at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Calabria, and from 2012 to 2017 he was Assistant Researcher of Inorganic Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Technologies of the University of Calabria. Since 2017 he is Associate Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the same department.

His research interests are focused on the photophysical characterization of luminescent coordination compounds for application in material science and biomedical fields, and on the colloidal synthesis and photophysical characterization of metallic nanoparticles exhibiting plasmonic properties, for application in advanced materials for energy saving and biomedicine. The techniques used range from steady-state and time-dependent fluorescence to polarized emission spectroscopy.

For the commercial exploitation of its patents, in 2010 and in 2021 he founded two high-tech start-up companies active in the development of an electrochromic smart window.

He has been the supervisor of 26 experimental theses (second level) and 6 Ph.D. students.