I completed my PhD in 2009 at the University of Milan, with a thesis in Parasitology studying the intramitochondrial symbiont Midichloria and contributing to the building of the basic knowledge on these bacteria: distribution, full genome sequencing and evolutionary reconstructions, description of a bacterial family. I also coordinated the work that provided the first evidence for the infectivity of Midichloria to vertebrate hosts, including humans. During my post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Camerino, I worked on the study of symbiosis in mosquitoes and sand flies acquiring know-how spanning from the biology to the methodology for bacterial genetic manipulation. I have been Associate Professor of Parasitology at the University of Milan since Sept 2016, where I have been working on therapeutic engineered bacteria, able to modulate the immune response, for the control of vector-borne diseases. Moreover, I’m working on the study of arthropod symbiosis (bacteria and fungi).

Symbionts
arthropod vectors
control strategies