Journal of Powder Metallurgy & Mining
Open Access

Biography

Dr. Simona Raneri is a Conservator Scientist for Cultural Heritage and Geologist; she has got her Ph.D. in Earth Science cum laude at the Dept. of Bio., Geo. and Env. Science of the University of Catania in 2016 (Italy) with a project devoted to (i) inspect the surface texture and sub-surface structure changes due to degradation processes in natural building stones employed in Cultural Heritages and (ii) investigate the efficiency of innovative nano-structured products for stone protection and conservation. In detail, a theoretical and empirical approach based on innovative and non-destructive methods has been applied in order to: highlight the potential of classical and innovative complementary methods in quantifying the structural changes in porous materials due to degradation processes and conservative treatments, explain how they help to facilitate the understanding of stone weathering and validate the use of geometrical models in describing complex pore systems. During her graduate training, part of her research was presented in several international conferences and published in specialized journals. She was fortunate enough to perform several training periods and experimental sessions at Italian and foreign Research Institutes, deepening her knowledge in the use of novel analytical techniques such as NMR, SANS, X-ray and neutron imaging. In these frameworks, she also acquired skills and expertise in the acquisition and processing data as well as in the statistical treatment of several datasets in order to compare and merge results getting from different analytical methods. Beside the main research topic focused on natural stones, the competences acquired in the application of both classical and innovative and non-invasive methods allowed supporting several scientific research projects promoted by several research groups, mainly focused on archaeometry. She widely collaborated with other research groups, specialized in several scientific disciplines (i.e., Geology, Archaeology, Material Sciences, Chemistry, Physics, etc.). She delivered numerous research papers (32 article in peer reviewed journals) and conference presentations (about 40), ensuring the dissemination of the results of her researches. She is really open-minded and keen to incorporate findings from different methods into research; she is a very active researcher, not afraid of huge workloads and mastering new research areas.

Research Interest

Thin section analysis (OM); Scanning electron microscopy (SEM-EDS); X-ray diffraction (XRD); X-ray fluorescence (XRF; laboratory and portable apparatus); ICP-MS and LA-ICP-MS; Raman spectroscopy (laboratory and portable apparatus); FT-IR Spectroscopy; Mercury Intrusion Porosimetry (MIP); nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and portable NMR; X-ray computed tomography (µ-CT); neutron radiography and tomography; small angle neutron scattering (SANS); 3D surface digital microscope.