Ilaria Degano is an associate professor in Analytical Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry of the University of Pisa. She received her Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry in February 2009 from the University of Pisa (Italy) and her research mainly deals with the study and characterization of natural and synthetic organic dyes and pigments employed in works of art by chromatography and mass spectrometric techniques. Moreover, she is involved in the study of organic materials such as terpenic resins, proteins and lipids in amorphous archaeological residues. She has developed analytical and instrumental methodologies based on GC/MS, HPLC-DAD-FD, HPLC-MS/MS and thermoanalytical techniques as Py-GC/MS and EGA-MS for the study of complex mixtures of organic materials and the understanding of their ageing pathways. She is responsible for the HPLC-DAD-FD and HPLC-MS/MS instrumentations in the Department.