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Broad research specialisms: Experimental microbial ecology (coalescence of communities, local adaptation). To investigate both how microbial life adapts to conditions and how specific functional traits survived centuries (i.e. metals resistance related genes) and single populations coalesced into communities is one main driver in my research.
Naturally microbes do not live alone but thrive interacting with each other and I believe that the whole community (or meta-community) context, using either synthetic or natural communities in experiments, could be important to reply questions about community ecology.

Research interests: Microbial ecology/evolution of prokaryotes and microbial eukaryotes in natural/controlled environment, statistical methods to analyse community structure, synthetic communities, ecological functions, public good dynamics, theoretical ecology.
Geobiology, microbe/mineral substrate interaction, subsurface, geochemistry, extremophiles, acidophiles, uncultured microbes culturing challenge, origin and evolution of microbial communities.
In my future career I wish to try and understand better the mechanisms that shape microbial communities, the effect of microbes on the substrates both in natural and controlled environment and vice versa, thus the plasticity of microbial communities. Drivers to the swing of communities are pivotal both in the industrial use of microbes and in a changing world. I think community structure in coalescence events and plasticity in adaption to environmental conditions are pivotal themes to unravel the functioning of communities, especially in natural communities.

Research projects: I just finished my PhD on experimental ecology of acidophilic communities.
At the MEG I will apply experimental and observational microbial ecology to a new exciting theme for me: antimicrobial resistance (AMR)! I will be working on the impact that waste water disturbance has on natural water bodies, in terms of AMR of the microbial community (resistome). Furthermore I will attempt reviewing AMR genes presence in the microbial life of freshwater environments focusing on sediments, invertebrates and metazoans. My project is part of the CIPAIS program “Limnological investigations on Lake Maggiore”.

Publications (just click here)