People

Francesco has a M.Sc. in Medical Biotechnology and a Ph.D. in Experimental Pathology. He developed an expertise in Bioinformatics, Genomics and Statistical Genetics.

He previously worked at UCL, where he first developed the analysis pipelines for UCL Genomics, the NGS facility of the Campus. He then led the Bioinformatics at the Centre for Translational Genomics, a partnership between ULC Institute of Child Health and Great Ormond Street Hospital. He moved to Aarhus University as Associate Professor in Genomics and Bioinformatics, where he led the Bioinformatics analyses in Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia for the iPSYCH consortium.

Later, he worked for two years in QIAGEN Bioinformatics, as part of the Global Product Management team for the CLC portfolio.

Before joining the University of Pavia as Associate Professor in Bioinformatics, Francesco worked as Head of Bioinformatics for the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency in UK.

More information on Francesco’s personal website: http://lescai.eu

Mariangela developed an interest in the highly interdisciplinary field of Bioinformatics during her graduate studies in Biological Sciences. She holds a PhD in Bioinformatics, focusing on the investigation of mitochondrial variations in human health and disease, by NGS data. After completing her PhD, she moved to ITB-CNR, working on a metabarcoding project. In the following years, she worked as a postdoc fellow at the LNCIB and at the DSV, University of Trieste, where she was involved in the characterization of patient-derived tumour tissues and organoids, with omics data. She is really fascinated with the complexity of the information encoded by the Human genome and still to be unmasked through the analysis of large-scale genomic datasets.

Eugenio is a Ph.D. student in the Genetics, Molecular and Cell Biology Doctoral programme.

He has a Master of Science in Molecular Biology and Genetics, which he combines with the experience as a software developer, providing him with a valuable perspective at the intersection between molecular biology and computer science.

After graduation, he has lived, worked, and studied abroad. He discovered a passion for coding and software development while living in Japan, which eventually led him to work for a software company.

His Ph.D. project, entitled “Genome Bioinformatics for in-silico Medicine and Omics Data”, focuses on using deep learning techniques to analyse genomic data and identify patterns associated with complex phenotypes. By applying cutting-edge bioinformatics and machine learning methods, he aims to contribute to the development of more precise and personalised medical treatments.

Simone has a B.Sc. in Biotechnology, and his studies focused on the application of Biotechnology to medicine. His Degree is characterised by a strong focus on several biological disciplines, especially in Genetics, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Simone has discovered an interest in Bioinformatics, because it offers an opportunity to integrate the expertise of different disciplines. For this reason, he decided to pursue an internship in this field and submit a Bachelor thesis on this subject.

His Bachelor project was focused on developing a Nextflow pipeline to study horizontal gene transfer of different microbial species into the Human genome, with a title “hgtseq: a standard pipeline to study horizontal gene transfer“. He is now involved in the application of this pipeline on large Human sequencing studies.

Gerardo Acquaviva has a Bachelor degree in Biological Sciences awarded by the University of Bologna, with a thesis in microbiology entitled “The molecular mechanisms underlying the development of microbial biofilms”.

He is currently enrolled in the Master’s degree in “Molecular biology and genetics” at the university of Pavia and has chosen an internship in Bioinformatics, a research area which has captured his interest.

His internship project is focused on the use of network analysis methods, to uncover genetic determinants underlying inflammatory mechanisms in common to different high-impact diseases.

Davide Bagordo has a Bachelor degree in Biotechnology, awarded at the University of Pavia. His studies focused mainly on chemistry, genetics, molecular genetics, biology and molecular biology of eukaryotes and prokaryotes. He graduated with a thesis in organic chemistry entitled “On the origin of homochirality”.

Within our Lab he graduated in the Master’s Degree in “Advanced Biotechnology”, with an internship in Computational Genomics. His thesis project, entitled “Computational Genomics approaches to study rare-variants mutational load in Joubert Syndrome“, focused on the mutational load of protein-truncating variants (PTV) in ciliopathies, as part of a collaboration with Enza Maria Valente’s lab (DMM and Mondino hospital).