Her teaching interests include sustainable energy, thermodynamics and applied thermodynamics, cryogenic and superconductivity, strength of materials, mechanics of materials, and material science. Her primary research interest is superconducting materials for large powerful magnets to be used in particle accelerators, medical devices, and fusion energy machines. Superconductors are exciting materials that are able, under the right conditions, to carry large currents with no resistive dissipation. This characteristic makes them well suited to be used for electromagnets, to reduce the overall size and cost of the devices that employ such materials. Chiesa's lab specializes in electrical and mechanical measurements of those materials.