Luciana Bianchi is a Research Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the Johns Hopkins University. She earned her Doctorate in Astronomy (summa cum laude) from the University of Padua. Prior to joining the Johns Hopkins University in 1996, she held research positions at Italian institutes, the European Space Agency (Vilspa, Spain), and the Space Telescope Science Institute (Baltimore, MD, USA).

She has authored over 500 scientific publications, including invited papers and reviews, and invited book contributions. She has given invited talks and reviews at different venues in the US (Princeton, Baltimore, Pasadena,...), Canada (Montreal, Victoria), Europe (Madrid, Paris, Spineto, Venice, Tenerife, Munich,...), IL (Tel Aviv), at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg, etc. She has been supervising PhD dissertations of students from different Countries.
She is a member of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the American Astronomical Society (A.A.S.), the European Astronomical Society (E.A.S.), and a honorary member of the Sociedad Española de Astronomía (SEA).
She has been serving as panel chair or panel member in panels and committees for NASA, for the European Research Council of the European Commission ("Universe Panel"), for national space agencies and science foundations including the Russian Science Foundation, Canada, Chile, and others.

Her research focuses on massive stars and post-AGB stars (white dwarfs and planetary nebulae) in the Milky Way and in nearby galaxies, stellar populations, star formation and dust. She has been leading, or participated in, numerous observing programs with IUE, FUSE, GALEX, UVIT (UV), HST (UV to near-IR, including large treasury programs), and large ground-based telescopes, as well as theoretical modeling efforts.

She was a science co-Investigator in the NASA's GALEX mission (2003-2013), and co-PI during the study phase of the earlier UV sky-survey mission concept which then evolved into GALEX; in the GALEX science team she was leading studies of nearby galaxies, and the data archive planning. She continues to lead the "UV sky" project, which provides the first comprehensive view of the sky at Ultraviolet (UV) wavelengths, and the characterization of hundreds of million UV sources from the GALEX surveys, matched with corollary data at other wavelengths (SDSS, Pan-STARRS, GSC2, 2MASS, Gaia), as well as UV time-domain studies.

She has been involved in development and testing of astronomical instrumentation, and has led or participated in design, development, or science operations of space-borne observatories including IUE, FUSE and GALEX. Currently, she is co-Investigator in a NASA rocket project with UV instrumentation, and in the concept design of new space telescopes.

She has been for many years member or consultant in NASA's Science Mission Directorate Forums ("Origins", "Universe", "SEPOF") to help develop strategies for enhancing the spinoff from NASA science and technology to improve effectiveness of formal and informal education.