The National Research Council of Italy (CNR) is the coordinating institution of the DAM4CO₂ project. It is the largest public research organization in Italy with ca. 8500 employees. In DAM4CO₂, the CNR is present with two of its 88 Research Institutes, both belonging to the Department of Chemical Sciences and Materials Technology: the Institute on Membrane Technology (ITM) and the Institute of Chemistry of OrganoMetallic Compounds (ICCOM).
CNR-ITM is active in the field of membrane science, technology, and engineering for gas separation and conversion, water and liquid treatment, bioartificial organs, biotechnology, food and agriculture. CNR-ICCOM is dedicated to the development of fundamental and applied research in the fields of advanced and functional materials, renewable energies, and sustainable chemistry. In DAM4CO₂, CNR puts in place the skills in membranes preparation, characterization and modelling of Alessio Fuoco, Elisa Esposito, Elena Tocci, Marcello Monteleone and John Jansen, as well as the solid state NMR competences of Lucia Calucci and Elisa Carignani.
Siria Bertolozzi received her Master’s degree in Chemistry from the University of Pisa in September 2024, with a master thesis on new selenourea based chiral solvating agents for NMR enantiodiscrimination of amino acid derivatives. In November 2024, she joined the European project “Double Active Membranes for a Sustainable CO₂ Cycle” (DAM4CO₂) under the supervision of Dr. Lucia Calucci. Her research focuses on the characterisation of fillers (Metal-organic frameworks and insoluble polymers), soluble polymers, and mixed matrix membranes developed within DAM4CO₂ through solid-state NMR techniques with aim of obtaining detailed information on structure and dynamics of the investigated compounds and their interactions with CO₂.
Alessandro Rizzuti, with a Master's degree in Business Administration and Management, has acquired in-depth knowledge mainly in economics field and various multidisciplinary skills in management, law, business/market and data analysis. Since February 2025, he joined the European project “Double Active Membranes for a Sustainable CO₂ Cycle” (DAM4CO₂) as a research fellow under the supervision of Dr. Alessio Fuoco and Dr. Valentina Tortelli. Currently, his work focuses mostly on project tracking activities, gives his contribution in all stages of the project's life during the process of development, financial planning, management and reporting. That is closely linked to certain aspects of a project and therefore necessary for the refund by the European Commission of the eligible expenses carried over and the proper implementation during all the different stages of the work plan.
Carmen Rizzuto, got her Ph.D. in Physical, Chemical, and Materials Sciences and Technologies PON R&I Scholarships for the industrial characterization of the theme at the University of Calabria in June 2022. Since October 2022, she has been involved in the Prin-doMino 2022 project, and she focused on the preparation, characterization, and modeling of efficiently Mixed Matrix Membranes based on (per-)fluorinated metalorganic frameworks for the treatment of large amounts of CO₂ under the scientific supervision of Dr. Alessio Fuoco and Dr. Elena Tocci. In October 2024, she joined the European project "Double Active Membranes for a Sustainable CO₂ Cycle" (DAM4CO₂), supervised by Dr. Alessio Fuoco and Dr. Elena Tocci. Nowadays, she is focused on preparing, characterizing, and modeling membranes for CO₂ capture and catalysis.
Martina Vaccaro, completed her MSc. in Pharmacy at the University of Calabria in October 2023, with an experimental thesis in collaboration with CNR-ITM. She is very glad to continue the work on membranes within the framework of DAM4CO₂, and specifically to work on the “ Preparation and characterization of mixed matrix membranes for capture and/or conversion of CO₂" under the supervision of Dr. Alessio Fuoco and Dr. Johannes Carolus Jansen.
Vincenzo Vigna is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Translational Medicine at the University of Calabria, with a dissertation focused on combining Artificial Intelligence and QM computational approaches to elucidate the mechanism of action of anticancer drugs. Since 2025, he has been working as a Research Fellow on the European project "Double Active Membranes for a Sustainable CO₂ Cycle" (DAM4CO₂) at the Institute on Membrane Technology of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR-ITM) under the supervision of Dr. Alessio Fuoco and Dr. Elena Tocci. His research focuses on in silico design of membranes for CO₂ capture through the development of Artificial Intelligence models, combining classical machine learning techniques and advanced neural networks. Dr. Vigna holds a Master's degree in Chemistry at the University of Calabria (2021), where he specialized in Chemistry for Environment, Health, and Territory and Computational Chemistry.