Dr. Cristina Carucci graduated at University of Cagliari-Italy (M.Sc.) in 2014 with first class honours under the supervision of Prof. M. Monduzzi and Prof. A. Salis. She studied at the University of Limerick, Ireland, under the supervision of Prof. E. Magner and in 2018 she was awarded a PhD on the design and characterization of nanostructures such as Metal Organic Frameworks to host enzymes for biocatalysis. After a postdoctoral work at Université de Bordeaux (France) on the design and characterization of ultra ordered mesoporous bio-electrodes from colloidal crystals under the supervision of Prof. A. Kuhn and Dr. N. Mano, she was a researcher in Physical Chemistry (RTD-A) at the Department of Chemical and Geological Sciences in Cagliari. She then worked as "assegnista di ricerca" for 1 year with the project: The nanobiointerface, biomolecular interactions and hard/soft matter nanoparticles modulated by electrolytes. Currently she is a researcher tenure track (RTT) in physical chemistry. 

In current research she focused on the following projects: 
Study of the effects of weak electrolytes (buffer solutions) on lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) as mRNA transporters. In collaboration with the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) in Germany, the specific effects of weak electrolytes used to regulate pH and changes due to interaction with the buffer on their structure are under study. LNPs bulk phase structure was evaluated trough 2 beamtimes spent at the Hamburg synchrotron (P12 EMBL BioSAXS Beamline). 

Study of corona protein formation on mesoporous silica (MSN) nanoparticles to be used as drug carriers. The work was performed at "The Institute of Catalysis and Surface Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences" in Krakow (Poland), as part of the project funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (Maeci) joint Italy-Poland, the project "Canaletto". Here she studied the formation of the corona protein on mesoporous silica (MSN) nanoparticles. The study, based on the deepening of the phenomena at the interface between nanoparticles and model proteins, was done through the use of tools such as quartz crystal microbalance (QCM), contact angle, circular dichroism (CD) and infrared spectroscopy for solid state.

New strategies to combat antibiotic resistance. During the three years of research for the RTDA project, she studied different drug delivery systems (with carriers based on hard and soft matter). As carriers "hard matter" she synthesized and studied nanoparticles of mesoporous silica (MSN), while for carriers "soft matter" she studied dendrimers and LNPs. For her research project she realized the immobilization of enzymes and receptors specialized in attack and recognition of Gram positive bacteria respectively. In collaboration with Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) she developed a drug delivery systems based on this concept. 

Her research is focused on biophysical chemistry and phenomena at the bionanointerface. She participated in 10 international conferences as oral presenter. She was in the organizing committee of the International conference “Interfaces 2021” https://convegni.unica.it/interfaces and "Next Generation Chemists" 2022 https://www.soc.chim.it/en/node/2953. She is author or co-author of 29 peer-reviewed publications and 4 scientific covers with an H-index of 13 and 487 citations (May 7th 2024), ORCID: 0000-0001-8660-788X. She is reviewer for ACS, De Gruyter, RSC, Elsevier, MDPI, Springer and Wiley (https://publons.com/researcher/1365565/cristina-carucci).