Full Professor of Chemistry at the University of Florence, co-founder and former Director of the Center of Magnetic Resonance (CERM), co-founder and present Director and President of the Interuniversity Consortium on Magnetic Resonance of Metallo Proteins (CIRMMP).
His research interests include bioinorganic chemistry, structural biology, development of NMR-based structural methodologies in solution and in the solid state, metalloproteins and metalloenzymes, spectroscopy, theory of electron and nuclear relaxation, NMR of paramagnetic species, relaxometry, contrast agents and NMR-based analytical methods in general. Particularly worth mentioning are his recent studies on the integration of structural techniques, where he has shown that simultaneous refinement of X-ray and NMR data can lead to i) a significant increase of accuracy of the resulting structural data and ii) a robust strategy to assess if structural differences exist for a biomolecule between solution and crystalline state. He has also significantly contributed to the theoretical understanding of the phenomenon of Dynamic Nuclear Polarization (DNP), both in solids and in liquids. DNP is a promising strategy to enhance the sensitivity of the NMR experiment, possibly transforming NMR into a completely new technique for the investigation of biological systems in ways that would have been unconceivable only a few years ago.
Starting from 2008, his research has been also directed towards metabolomics, aiming at obtaining the metabolic profiles of biological fluids such as urines and blood using NMR spectroscopy; defining procedures for sample preparation and for the acquisition of NMR spectra; developing statistical methods for the analysis of the data; and correlating the metabolic profiles with pathophysiological characteristics of the subjects studied. The results of this research, published in international journals, have been cited several times not only in specialized literature but also in other sectors, in books, websites and also in non-specialist press. Claudio Luchinat has become one of the international reference points for metabolomics, and is invited to give plenary lectures on the topic at conferences both specialized and in other sectors. He is invited as a keynote speaker from research laboratories in various countries around the world, and invited to inaugurate new research centers and research infrastructures.