Paola Lova's research focuses on the design and processing of functional materials. Since becoming an Assistant Professor in 2020, her work has centered on utilizing metal oxide nanostructures to improve light harvesting in photoactive media and to drive the photocatalytic degradation of emerging pollutants. Alongside these research lines, she maintains a long-standing focus on polymer photonics.

She has served as Principal Investigator (PI) for the MERITI project, which targeted the sequestration and optical detection of food degradation by-products, and the WATEROIC project, which focused on the selective sorption and photo-mineralization of emerging pollutants using polymer matrices. Currently, she is the PI of the LOOP project (€1.2M), targeting the reductive defluorination of PFAS under environmental conditions, and the Coordinator of the LASER project (€4.1M), which focuses on circularity within the seafood supply chain.