Franca Albertini is a research director at the Italian National Research Council (CNR) and leader of the Magnetic and Multiferroic Materials Group at the Institute of Materials for Electronics and Magnetism (IMEM). Her main interests are in magnetic and multifunctional properties of bulk and nanoscale materials for energy and bio-medicine applications. Her current activity is mainly focused on the understanding and tuning the multifunctional properties of magnetic shape memory Heusler compounds.

She has been chair of international conferences (Joint European Magnetic Symposia JEMS2012, IEEE-Advances in Magnetics 2020-21) and program chair of conferences (JEMS2016) and symposia of international conferences (e.g. MRS, CIMTEC, JEMS, ICM).  She has been the president of the Italian Magnetism Association (2017-2021) and has served different scientific societies (e.g.  IEEE-Magnetics, European Magnetic Association, European Physical Society).

Her scientific activity has gone hand in hand with her interests in gender and science studies and science communication. She has taken part in the activities of the Italian Women and Science Association (Associazione Donne e Scienza) since its foundation and is presently a member of the board of the association.