Marta E. Alberto is currently Associate Professor at the Chemistry and Chemical Technologies Department of the University of Calabria (UNICAL). She received the M.Sc in Chemistry (110/110 cum laude) and the European M.Sc in Theoretical Chemistry and Computational Modelling (TCCM) in 2007 developing her thesis at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Paris (ENSCP, FRANCE). She obtained her PhD at UNICAL in 2010 focusing on enzymatic catalysis and on the mechanism of action of matal-based anticancer drugs, by means of first principle calculations.  During the PhD she spent 6 months at the University of Porto (PORTUGAL) in the Maria Joao Ramos’ group. After 4 years of post-doc at UNICAL and a period as visiting researcher at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana of MEXICO CITY under the supervision of Annia Galano, she was awarded the excellent Individual Fellowship Marie Curie (MSCA-IF-Call 2014) and she moved at ENSCP-Chimie ParisTech (Paris, FRANCE) where she developed her 2-years project on the design and characterization of dual-effect photosensitizers for Photodynamic Therapy (COMBPDCHEMOTHERAPY) in the Carlo Adamo’s group. For her scientific achievements, she obtained the National Prize “Gastone De Santis-ITALFARMACO” from the Italian Chemistry Society (SCI) and the “Telesio Medal” from the SCI-Calabria, in 2014. In 2020 she joined the Editorial Board of the Computational and Theoretical Chemistry Section of the journal “Molecules” and the Chemistry Section of “Applied Sciences”. She is currently member of the Guarantee Committee (CUG) of her Host Institution (UNICAL) and member of the Internationalization Committee of the CTC Department. She has obtained the National Scientific Qualification as Full Professor of Physical Chemistry (03/A2) and Inorganic Chemistry (03/B1) (ASN21-23). Until the end of september 2025 she will coordinate a national PRIN project as Principal Investigator (PI) approved by the Italian Ministry of University and Research under the PRIN-2022 action (Projects of great National Interest 2022), with collegues from UNIPA and UNICT.   

The activity of Marta E. Alberto mainly deals with the exploration of the photochemistry and photophysics of new metal-based and metal-free compounds for light-mediated anticancer approaches including Photodynamic Therapy (PDT), PhotoChemotherapy (PCT), Multimodal Approaches, Dual PCT/PDT with a particular focus on the design of new agents with hypoxia-activity.  She is also interested in modelling organic, enzymatic and biomimetic reaction mechanisms.