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Biography

Dr Lucia Burgio F黑料社区 is Lead Conservation Scientist at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, where she heads the Science laboratory and guides the scientific analysis of museum objects. She assists the museum鈥檚 curators and conservators in the examination and understanding of the collections, providing information on materials and techniques, methods of construction, date, attribution and provenance. She has published extensively on her special interests, including historical pigments, and Asian and Indigenous American lacquer.

Her scientific analysis activities have resulted in the rediscovery and characterisation of previously undocumented pigments, such as spherical copper resinate, mercury white and bismuth white. 

She is a researcher with a strong interdisciplinary academic background: after completing her secondary school diploma in classical studies (鈥淢aturita鈥� Classica鈥�), she graduated in chemistry summa cum laude from the University of Palermo, Italy, and completed a PhD degree in chemistry at University College London with a thesis on the use of Raman microscopy and other techniques for the analysis of pigments on art objects. 

She is the UK representative at the EuChemS Working Party on Chemistry for Cultural Heritage, and chairs the Royal Society of Chemistry鈥檚 Heritage Science Expert Working Group (within the Analytical Methods Committee), using her position to promote the role and importance of analytical science in the cultural heritage sector and disseminate heritage science to various audiences.

The dovetailing of my school and university journeys gave me both the confidence and breadth of perspective needed to approach heritage science research more creatively.

Lucia Burgio

Q&A

Can you tell us more about your work?

I often liken my job to that of a forensic scientist, except that instead of crime scenes I investigate museum objects. Each piece holds clues and there is often sleuthing involved when I analyse cultural heritage objects. The evidence I uncover provides jigsaw puzzle pieces that help us understand our past, and tell us how materials can survive for centuries and respond to climate change. By straddling art and science, my work helps preserve the material evidence of human creativity and history, so that it can be understood and enjoyed by generations to come.

Who or what first sparked your interest in chemistry, and how has that interest evolved over time? 

At the age of 10 I visited the Italian island of Elba and bought a souvenir from its mines. It was an A4-sized card with fragments of colourful minerals stuck on it, next to their common name and, most importantly, their chemical formula. I was hooked, and decades later I am still working with pigments, many of which start their life as colourful minerals. 

Shortly after, I joined forces with a school friend, collecting samples of different metals and alloys, experimenting on them and checking which ones we could melt in our kitchens, and how they changed. 

But the clear realisation that chemistry was going to be a permanent fixture in my life came at the age of 14, when I was finally introduced to chemistry in school. The first lessons were on the periodic table and the theory of orbitals, and I spent hours on my parents' UTET encyclopaedia (there was no internet then!) and borrowing as many chemistry books as I could, trying to find out more, satisfy my curiosity and truly understand the topics.

What has been the most rewarding or memorable highlight of your career so far? 

Coaching and mentoring promising young scientists and seeing them progress and go from strength to strength. Knowing that I have given a small contribution to the field with a few discoveries.

Finding out that, without any intervention or pressure from me, my kids shared my fascination with chemistry when they were little.

What have been the biggest challenges that you have faced over the course of your time in science, and what have you learned from those experiences? 

The challenge of working full time while bringing up my two children, and trying to give 100% both at work and at home without neglecting either. I have learnt that juggling my job and my family made me a lot more focused and productive at work, and I am now much more aware of the difference between quality and quantity!

Learning to use my job as a safety valve in bereavement: I could let science absorb me and give me a few moments of oblivion.

Thinking back to earlier in your career, are there any words of wisdom that you wish someone had told you? 

I wish someone had told me sooner that I needed to be more assertive instead of waiting for the quality of my work to speak for itself; and it would have been helpful if I had been shown. 

What do you wish more people understood about your field or the chemical sciences in general? 

That heritage science and chemistry are not as forbidding and impenetrable as many think they are. And that you can discover a passion for them both.

In what ways does creativity influence how you think about or carry out your work? 

I do my best not to be narrow-minded in my approach to work, strive to keep my horizons wide, squash down any preconceptions I may have, explore questions from many angles, and welcome other people's knowledge and expertise, especially if they dovetail with mine. I think of this as a 'creative collaboration' approach.

Looking back, I think this perspective stems from the education I received: the Italian school system in the 1980s provided a multidisciplinary foundation, allowing me the full freedom of choice when it came to choose a university path: I was able to study chemistry without forgetting my previous good grounding in humanities. 

And the Italian university system was great too: five years of intense, gruelling study that allowed me to explore organic, inorganic and physical chemistry in depth. By the end of my degree, I was able to choose my next step with the support of a genuinely multidisciplinary background. Looking back, the dovetailing of my school and university journeys gave me both the confidence and breadth of perspective needed to approach heritage science research more creatively.

Are there any scientific developments, either recent or on the horizon, that you are excited about? 

Not in my field, but I am so hopeful about the development of advanced diagnostics enabling personalised medicine. With so many illnesses becoming more widespread among increasingly younger people, from cancer to dementia, I am excited about advances in sequencing, immunotherapy, targeted therapy and vaccine development.

What does good research culture mean to you, and why does it matter? 

Good research culture means feeling part of a community in which your contribution, knowledge and perspective are valued and actively sought, where collaboration and mutual respect are the norm, where intellectual curiosity is encouraged and supported, and where people learn from and support one another in an open-minded environment.

How important would you say collaboration is for producing high quality science? How has collaboration influenced your work? 

Looking at an issue from multiple perspectives can only improve the final result. No one holds a monopoly on knowledge, and without collaboration we risk missing essential points of view. Every one of my days at work involves collaborating with colleagues from different disciplines, or with other scientists whose background and expertise complements my own.

What is your favourite element and why? 

A very difficult question for someone like me, who fell in love with the entire periodic table the moment I was introduced to it.

My gut response, unfiltered by reasoning or any 'proper' chemical knowledge, would be strontium, because of the glorious crimson colour of its flame which mesmerised me the first time I saw it in school. 

With my cooking hat on, it has to be sodium: no dish is perfect (even cakes!) without just the right amount of sodium chloride.