The focus of her research is "Innovation in biomedicine". Gioconda is particularly interested in understanding the factors that make the difference between highly innovative and low-innovative countries in relation to biomedicine. To answer her question, she will rely on Luhmann’s system theory, analyzing the interaction of function systems on the basis of structural couplings between them. It is known that crisis periods, like wars and their counterparts in health (epidemics), tend to speed up the innovation process. Therefore, she is currently investigating how the pandemic caused by the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 boosts innovation, studying two cases: i) the COVID-19 vaccine’s development and ii) the establishment of a project that helps and makes safe the reopening of the schools safe with covid-19 testing, comparing its developments in Germany and Mexico.

Concerning the first case of study, she relies on the comparison between the German vaccines, (BioNTech-Pfizer and CureVac) the attempts to develop vaccines in Mexico, and vaccines developed in Cuba. For the second study case, she is investigating how the strategy was developed in Germany, the Mexican contribution, and the differences on the process of acceptance and establishment in both countries.

Based on her hypothesis that structural couplings are the main fundamental to generate an innovative environment that finally ends in innovations development. For these cases of study, she will compare i) the pre-existing (pre-pandemic) structural couplings between the health, economic, political, and scientific function systems in the innovation development process, ii) the pandemic (crisis) contributions to generate new structural couplings, iii) the differences between the structural couplings (pre-existing and new generated) in Germany, Cuba and Mexico, and iv) the contribution of those structural couplings to the innovation development. To finally define the minimum structural couplings needed to establish a productive innovation environment.