Giuseppina De Simone was born in 1970 in Naples, Italy. She graduated in chemistry at the University of Naples Federico II (1993). She worked from August 1994 to January 1995 at the Drug Design Group-Sandoz Pharma AG in Basel, and from September 1995 to February 1996 at the University of Pavia. From November 1996 to January 1997 she was visiting scientist at the Max Plank Institute-Hamburg Germany. In 1998 she received her PhD at the University of Naples. Since 2003, she is Senior Researcher at the Institute of Biostructures and Bioimaging (IBB) of the Italian National Research Council.

The research activities of Dr. Giuseppina De Simone are focused on several aspects of structure/function relationships in macromolecules with a biological interest. These studies have been dedicated to a variety of macromolecular systems with different structural complexities and have been carried out by combining X-ray crystallographic methods with several other techniques, including enzyme expression and purification, enzyme functional characterization, molecular modelling, kinetic and spectroscopic analysis. Over the last ten years, in collaboration with a framework of international institutions, her research has been mainly dedicated to the structural characterization of enzymes involved in human diseases as well as the design/characterization of small molecules able to modulate their activity. Dr. De Simone is author of 120 scientific publications on international journals among which PNAS, Nat Cell Biol, JACS, Chem. Rev. She has been the Principal Investigator of several research grants from national (CNR; Regione Campania) and international (EU, Solvay Pharmaceuticals) institutions.

Currently Dr. De Simone is member of the editorial board of several international journals and associate editor of the Journal of Enzyme inhibition and Medicinal Chemistry.