Chemist and crystallographer with over 25 years of academic research and teaching experience, Prof. Michele Zema is Associate Professor in Mineralogy at the University of Bari “Aldo Moro”, Bari, Italy. Coordinator of the activities for the UN International Year of Crystallography in 2014, he acted as Executive Outreach Officer for the International Union of Crystallography from 2015 to 2024. He is co-founder and Chair of the Executive Committee of LAAAMP (Lightsources for Africa, the Americas, Asia, Middle East and Pacific), and serves on the Executive Committees of the International Mineralogical Association and the African Light Source. He is founding member and advisor to the Executive Committee of the African Crystallographic Association.
He implemented strategies and initiated actions for building capacity in science, such as the IUCr-UNESCO OpenLab, a network of crystallography schools and labs implemented in over 25 countries, and directed several international crystallography schools and meetings. He is co-founder of the X-TechLab, a hub for education and research in crystallography and structural science, based in Benin, and of CRXSTAL, the regional crystallography hub for the Caribbean islands, based in Jamaica.
As an expert in global science diplomacy and advocacy and in human resources and scientific infrastructure capacity building assessment, he convened science-policy sessions at different editions of the World Science Forum and the CILAC Forum, and acted as facilitator for the foundation of several crystallographic associations worldwide.
His research activity mainly deals with complex intracrystalline phenomena occurring under variable physicochemical conditions in minerals and inorganic solid solutions.
