Research fellow
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Silvia Pizzimenti graduated cum laude in Conservation Science and Technology for Cultural Heritage at the University of Milan in 2018. She completed her PhD in Chemistry and Materials Science at the University of Pisa in 2022 with a thesis entitled “The chemistry of artists’ oil paints” under the supervision of Prof. Celia Duce and Prof. Ilaria Bonaduce. A versatile methodological approach was designed in order to characterise the effect of different oils, pigments and driers on the autoxidation kinetics, monitor the evolution of oxidation products, evaluate the magnitude of oxidative degradation and cross-linking phenomena, and determine the structure of the cross-linked fraction of an oil paint system. The methodological approach was implemented by means of an approach based on thermoanalytical techniques (TGA, DSC), spectroscopic techniques (FTR-ATR) and mass spectrometry-based techniques (GC-MS, Py-GC-MS, EGA-MS, ESI-MS and LC-MS/MS). During her PhD, she worked in the research group of Prof. Guy Van Assche at the Materials and Chemistry Department, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Bruxelles, Belgium. During her Post-Doc, she worked at the Department of Electrochemistry at the Nanoscale in the J. Heyrovsky Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic under the supervision of Dr. Romana Sokolova. The research activity concerned the study of the degradation mechanism of organic pigments and natural pigments used in artworks by using electroanalytical methods and spectroelectrochemical techniques. Currently, her research activities concerned the investigation of the molecular composition, degradation products and physicochemical features of modern paints, composed of either synthetic or natural-based binders, by means of mass spectrometric analysis (Py-GC-MS, EGA-MS, LC-MS/MS), spectroscopic analysis (FTIR-ATR), and thermoanalytical techniques (DSC, TG and TG-IR).
Publications: https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=57211440616