Dr. Federico Zappaterra is Assistant Professor of Industrial Chemistry at the Department of Chemical, Pharmaceutical and Agricultural Sciences, University of Ferrara, Italy, in the Biocatalysis and Biotransformations group. His work sits at the meeting point of biocatalysis, organic synthesis, green chemistry and process engineering, where solubility, mass transfer, product recovery and yield shape the molecule and the route together: the ester bond that releases a drug in vivo has to survive its own synthesis first. This is clearest in his research on the rational design of prodrugs and codrugs, where poorly water-soluble active pharmaceutical ingredients such as ibuprofen, ursodeoxycholic acid and ferulic acid are conjugated with hydrophilic polyols by regioselective, solvent-free esterification with immobilized Candida antarctica lipase B, guided by molecular docking and validated on cell cultures. The same logic drives his work on bio-based polyesters, where enzymatic polycondensation, marine biodegradation and ecotoxicity form one design problem under safe and sustainable by design criteria. He completed his PhD in Biomedical Sciences and Biotechnology at the University of Ferrara and carried out research on esterification kinetics at Universidad Complutense de Madrid and at the Laboratory of Applied and Computational Biocatalysis in Trieste. He holds a granted Italian patent on the enzymatic preparation of esters of poorly water-soluble acids. ORCID 0000-0001-5852-2942.