The primary objective of the doctoral training courses is the acquisition of skills required to carry on high quality research activities at universities, public or private companies. For this purpose, students are trained, through continuous experimental researches and a proper specialist trail, to obtain the highest degree of expertise, and to develop self-organizing ability for researches in an international competitive context.

The educational goals are pursued by offering the chance to play full-time researches on modern themes of great interest in theoretical, technological, environmental, biomedical, and molecular-mechanistical fields. High quality equipped laboratories can be found in the STEBICEF Department.

The PhD program will also take advantage of the collaboration with institutions and organizations of national and international research in the context of agreements already entered into by the University of Palermo and others that may be activated in view of an ever-increasing development of chemical, biological, pharmaceutical and technological research in all its aspects. This aggregation has over the years showed significant synergistic effects especially with regard to the inter-departmental collaboration, completeness, scientific importance, and breadth of research carried out.

In the past few years, also the Institute of Nanostructured Materials of the National Research Council of Palermo (ISMN-CNR) has contributed to the research of the PhD Program.

The close collaboration between the different curricula of the PhD in Molecular and Biomolecular Sciences allows the development of the educational objectives through joint seminars reaching a broader level of preparation of the PhD students.

Research topics:

• Studies of biologically active substances, nutraceuticals, radiopharmaceuticals.
• Preparation and characterization of innovative polymer based Drug Delivery Systems .
• Characterization of new synthetic and natural products for biotechnological, environmental, cultural heritage, food and industrial applications.
• Structural and dynamic properties of supramolecular aggregates.
• Molecular studies on function and mechanisms regulating biolological processes (autophagy, apoptosis, embryogenesis, prokaryotic and eukaryotic biosynthetic pathways, etc. ).

Obiettivo primario della formazione dei dottorandi è l'acquisizione delle competenze necessarie per esercitare, presso Università, enti pubblici o soggetti privati, attività di ricerca di alta qualificazione. A tale fine, i dottorandi vengono formati, nell'ambito dei vari curricula, attraverso una costante attività di ricerca sperimentale ed un appropriato percorso didattico specialistico, onde ottenere, al massimo grado, lo sviluppo delle capacità di autogestire la ricerca in un contesto di competizione internazionale.

Gli obiettivi formativi vengono perseguiti offrendo ai dottorandi la possibilità di svolgere ricerca a tempo pieno su tematiche moderne e di grande interesse avendo a disposizione laboratori attrezzati e tutte le apparecchiature scientifiche presenti nelle sezioni del Dipartimento STEBICEF.

 Tematiche di ricerca:

• Studi di sostanze biologicamente attive, nutraceutiche, radiofarmaceutiche.
• Preparazione e caratterizzazione di Drug Delivery Systems basati su polimeri innovativi.
• Caratterizzazione di nuovi prodotti di origine sintetica o naturale per applicazioni biotecnologiche, ambientali, di beni culturali, alimentari ed industriali.
• Proprietà strutturali e proprietà dinamiche di aggregati sopramolecolari.
• Studi molecolari di funzioni e meccanismi che regolano I processi biologici (autofagia, apoptosi, embriogenesi, pathways biosintetici procariotici ed eucariotici, etc. )