Claudio Trombini was appointed a full professor at the University of Bologna in 1994; he currently serves as an Alma Mater Adjunct Professor at the University of Bologna, Italy and is a faculty member of the Erasmus Mundus MSc program in Chemical Innovation and Regulation. He is a fellow of the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of Bologna. He taught Organic Synthesis at the same University from 1979 to 2020, without interruption.
His scientific work has received awards from the Italian Chemical Society, including the Pino Medal (2013), and the GICO Senior Prize on organometallic chemistry (2012). He served on the Scientific Committees of the "A. Corbella Summer School on Organic Synthesis (1996-1998), and the prestigious "Ischia Advanced School of Organic Chemistry (2009-2018). Among various meetings, workshops, etc., he chaired the "III Italian-German Symposium on Organic Chemistry in Ravenna in 2001, the workshop "Perspective and Future Research in Malaria in 2015, and the "XXXVI National Meeting of the Division of Organic Chemistry of the Italian Chemical Society in 2015.
In the last 15 years, he has been member of the International Advisory Board of CHEMCATCHEM, member of the management committee of COST Action CM905-Organocatalysis (ORCA), coordinator of a "great relevance bilateral project" with India and funded by the Italian Foreign Office entitled: Design and Synthesis of new antimalarial molecules. From 2010 he has been visiting professor at the Universities of Pune (India), Algarve (P), Freiburg (CH), and Barcelona (E).
His primary scientific interests are centred around methodology-oriented organic synthesis, exploiting organometallic catalysis and organocatalysis to develop new stereoselective transformations. He was actively engaged in function-oriented synthesis, wherein he designed and synthesized new biologically active molecules against the parasites causing malaria and Leishmaniasis. He has also developed new sensors for metals in environmental or biological contexts. Notable examples include studies of mercury speciation in environmental and biological samples, the synthesis of fluorescent ligands for detecting magnesium in cell compartments, and the development of thermochemiluminescent compounds that can be employed as nanoprobes in biosensors and binding bioassays.