Luciana is an Entomologist with expertise in taxonomy and evolution of egg parasitoid wasps in the family Platygastridae (Hymenoptera). She is also interested in the development and utilization of biodiversity informatics tools to facilitate and expedite the description and documentation of new species. She is a supporter of Open Access (unrestricted access and unrestricted reuse) for all scientific literature. 

As the Curator of the Triplehorn Insect Collection she is leading the effort to upgrade the curatorial status of vast portions of the collection's holdings, including the beetles, butterflies and moths, cicadas, bees and wasps, among others. She and her co-authors recently published a catalogue of all beetle primary types held in the collection (Musetti, Molotievskiy, & Johnson, 2020).

Luciana believes in education and mentoring. She offers internships to undergraduate and grad students on curation and collections-based research. In the summer of 2020 she launched a virtual internship program for undergraduate students.

She is keen on reaching out to the community. She provides guided tours of the collection to all interested and is active on social media.  In 2009 she started the collection Facebook page and the collection's Flickr site. In 2013 she added Twitter and Instagram to the collection's social media outreach efforts. She enjoys photography and many of her photos have been posted in the collection's social media outlets. In 2014 she created the Pinning Block, a blog about the daily life in the Triplehorn Insect Collection. She is now working on making that site a more interactive outreach tool.

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Awards:

2017

University Distinguished Staff Award

2016

Outstanding Staff Award from the College of Arts and Sciences