Enzo Alessio was born in 1958; he studied chemistry at the University of Trieste (Italy) where he received the master degree in 1982. In 1985 he was attributed the Stampacchia Award for the first publication in the field of Chemistry, and in 1989 he obtained the Ph. D. in chemistry from the University of Ferrara (Italy).
After a NATO-CNR postdoctoral fellowship with Luigi G. Marzilli at Emory University (Atlanta, USA), he became first Research Associate (1991) and then Associate Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Trieste (2000). In 1996 he received the Nasini Award, which is assigned yearly by the Italian Chemical Society to a brilliant young scientist in the field of Inorganic Chemistry.
Beside teaching inorganic chemistry to B. Sc. and master students in chemistry, prof. Alessio is director of the PhD School in Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences and Technologies of the University of Trieste and vice-director of the Department of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences.
He is responsible for the NMR facility of the Department.
On several occasions he served as external referee in the evaluation panel for Italian and foreign grant applications, and for Ph D thesis in Chemistry (at the Universities of Leiden (NL), Lausanne (CH) and Strasbourg (FR)).
The main research interests of prof. Alessio are in the field of coordination chemistry and concern supramolecular inorganic chemistry (in particular the preparation of multi-chromophore assemblies for artificial photosynthesis), and the development of metal anticancer compounds. From 2003 to 2006 he was Chairman of the COST Chemistry Action D20 (Metal compounds in the treatment of cancer and viral diseases) and since 1995 he has coordinated several international COST working groups in this field. A ruthenium anticancer complex, nicknamed NAMI-A, developed by Prof. Alessio in previous years is currently being tested in a phase 1-2 clinical study at the Netherland Cancer Institute of Amsterdam on patients affected by non-small cell lung carcinoma. NAMI-A is the first ruthenium compound worldwide to reach phase 2 clinical trial.
Prof. Alessio is (co)author of 156 publications (and of 10 patents, national and international) on peer reviewed international Journals (h index = 42, ISI, December 2011; on the left the number of citations per year), including several reviews both in the field of supramolecular chemistry and of anticancer metal compounds.
He ranks in position 67 in the list of the '2500 top italian scientists'.
In 2006 he was the Editor of a volume in the series Structure and Bonding entitled Non-Covalent Multi-Porphyrin Assemblies, and in 2011 he edited the book entitled Bioinorganic Medicinal Chemistry for Wiley-VCH.
He is member of the International Advisory Board of the European Journal of Inorganic Chemistry and (from 2012) he will be in the Editorial Board of the Journal of Bioinorganic Chemistry.
He is member of the Scientific Committee of the Italian Conference on Supramolecular Chemistry, held in Italy every second year.
Prof. Alessio has given more than 70 lectures/seminars at universities, national and international symposia (including session-, keynote-, invited- and plenary-lectures).
In May 2011 he was invited for a lecture tour in Germany at the Universities of Dortmund, Marburg, Bochum, Goettingen and M�nster.