Vincenzo Palermo uses nanotechnology and supramolecular chemistry to create new materials for mechanical, electronics and energy applications. In particular, he works on the production of carbon-based composite materials and on the characterization of their structure and charge transport at the nanoscale.

He has published more than 130 scientific articles on international journals in chemistry, nanotechnology and materials science (>4000 citations, h-index=35).

In 2012 Vincenzo Palermo won the Lecturer Award for Excellence of the Federation of European Materials Societies (FEMS) and in 2013 the Research Award of the Italian Society of Chemistry (SCI).

He is also actively involved in science dissemination giving seminars to high-school students and laymen on the interplay between science and history. He has published several articles for general audience, on scientific discoveries, and two books on the life and science of Albert Einstein (Hoepli, 2015) and of Isaac Newton (Hoepli, 2016).

In 2017 he also won a Research Project Grant for Engineering Sciences, assigned within the Research Grants Open call 2017 from Vetenskapsrådet and received a scholarship from the Rune Berhardsson's Graphene fund.