Cristiano Zonta has been working in recent years on the physical organic chemistry of catalytic and molecular recognition processes. The focus of his interest has been the study of chiral confiend spaces and their application in catalysis and sensing. He would define himself as Physical Organic Chemist. He acquired initially his expertise in synthesis in Venice with Prof. De Lucchi, While his PhD with Prof. Hunter (Sheffield-UK) was mainly dedicated to the development of supramolecular architectures for the measurement of non-covalent interactions. After post-doctoral period in Venice and Padova with Prof. Licini, where he worked mainly in catalytic transformation using metal complexes, he got a assistant professorship position in 2007, he became in 2015 Associate Professor at the Department of Chemical Sciences at the University of Padova where from 2023 is Full Professor.

Research interest are mainly directed to: supramolecular cages, chiral sensing, catalysis and measurement of non-covalent interactions. An overview ot the recent studies can be seen in the following pubblications.

Supramolecular Cages

Begato,Pensa, Licini, Zonta "Combining Imine Condensation Chemistry with [3,3] Diaza-Cope Rearrangement for One-Step Formation of Hydrolytically Stable Chiral Architectures"  Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2023, 62, e202304490

Bravin, Mason, Licini, Zonta "A Diastereodynamic Probe Transducing Molecular Length into Chiroptical Readout" J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2019, 141, 11963

Bravin, Badetti, Scaramuzzo, Licini, Zonta "Triggering Assembly and Disassembly of a Supramolecular Cage" J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2017, 139, 6456

Chiroptical Probes

Zardi,Wurst, Licini, Zonta "Concentration-Independent Stereodynamic g-Probe for Chiroptical Enantiomeric Excess Determination"  J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2017, 139, 15616

Begato, Penasa, Licini, Zonta "Chiroptical Enhancement of Chiral Dicarboxylic Acids from Confinement in a Stereodynamic Supramolecular Cage" Acs Sens. 2022, 7, 1390

Beradozzi, Badetti, Carmo dos Santos, Wurst, Licini, Pescitelli, Zonta, Di Bari "Co(ii)-induced giant vibrational CD provides a new design of methods for rapid and sensitive chirality recognition" Chem. Commun. 2016, 52, 8428