Dr. Anna Cleta Croce

Anna Cleta Croce graduated in Biological Sciences in 1981 and completed her PhD in Histochemistry and Cytochemistry at the University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy in 1983. She has been engaged in research activity in photobiology with a permanent position at IGM-CNR since 1982 in Pavia, Italy. She is interested in fluorescence (induced, dyes and fluorochromes) and natural fluorescence (autofluorescence) in animal cells and tissues, investigated using UV–Visible spectroscopy and imaging. The studies are applied for the in situ, real-time, minimally invasive biochemical/functional characterization and diagnosis (optical biopsy) in biology and experimental biomedicine. She has 104 paper publications with 2240 citations and an h-index of 25 (Scopus, 13 October 2023) in these areas. She has been engaged for many years in hepatology, with a more recently devoted interest also in entomology. In hepatology, autofluorescence is studied as a photophysical biomarker of the metabolic/functional engagement of the liver in normal, physiologically altered (ischemia-reperfusion) diseased conditions. In entomology, autofluorescence is currently investigated in mosquitoes as a photophysical biomarker of their morpho-functional features and a basis for behavioral and environmental studies and the set-up of the control of vectors of the disease. She is serving as a referee for reputed photobiological and photochemical journals.