Lucia Zappalà

Full Professor of General and applied entomology [AGRI-05/A]
Membership Section: Applied Entomology

Lucia Zappalà (born in Catania, Italy, on 14/12/1974) is currently Full professor in General and Applied Entomology at the Department of Agriculture, Food and Environment (Di3A), University of Catania (Italy) (from March 2020). In 2001 she got her PhD in Agricultural Entomology at University “Federico II” of Naples (Italy). In 2003 she was on a one-year post-doctoral grant at the Dept. of Entomology and Nematology – University of Florida. Since 2006 she has been research assistant, Assistant Professor and then Associate Professor at the University of Catania. In March 2015 she was visiting professor at UC Berkeley (US).

Since 2008 she’s been teaching classes in various BSc and MSc courses. She is member of the teaching staff of the International PhD course in “Agricultural, Food and Environmental science”. She is currently Deputy Rector for International Relations, since October 2019. Since November 2024 she is President of the Board of Directors of the European University Alliance EUNICE.

She was Project and/or Research Unit Principal Investigator for several national (FIR, PRIN) and international (FP7-PEOPLE-IRSES, ARIMNET 2, Italy-Tunisia) research projects.

She is member of the Editorial Board of the journals Phytoparasitica, Entomologia Generalis and European Journal of Entomology. She is peer reviewer for several ISI journals.

She was a member of the Scientific Committee of several International conferences.

Since 2011 she has been appointed external evaluator for PhD thesis and research projects. She’s been appointed member of the EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) panel on Plant Health for the 2018-2024 term.

She is the Coordinator of the Agricultural Entomology division of the Italian Entomological Society since March 2024 and a member of the Italian National Academy of Entomology since 2019.

Her main research topics are Hymenoptera parasitoids, their biology and application as biocontrol agents in agricultural systems, integrated management of invasive insect pests and the side effects of pesticides on natural enemies. She published more than 300 indexed papers [h-index 37, total number of citations 5728 (source Scopus – Nov 2024) ORCID: 0000-0002-2804-3980.]

Last edit: 11/26/2024

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Academic Year 2016/2017

Her main research topics are Hymenoptera parasitoids, their biology, behavior and application as biocontrol agents mainly of exotic pests in agricultural systems as well as side effects of pesticides on natural enemies.

On these topics there are currently several research projects and activity going on, also in collaboration with Italian and foreign top experts of the various subjects.