Irene is Associate Professor at University of Salerno where she obtained a PhD in Chemistry in the field of the synthesis of bioactive marine natural products. She spent research periods at University of Strasbourg as a post-doctoral research fellow and at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Barcelona as visiting scientist. Since 2014 she has been teaching at Master ChemBioTech, organized by the École européenne de chimie, polymères et matériaux and School for Biotechnology of Strasbourg, a course dedicated to the solid-phase synthesis of biomacromolecules. Her research field is total synthesis of natural products (steroids and peptides) and their analogues, mainly peptidomimetics. In particular, ionophoric, antimicrobial and glycosidase inhibition properties of cyclic peptoids have been investigated. She is Associate Editor of SynOpen (Thieme).