Team
Martina Morandi
Martina is a PhD student in the Laboratory of Mucosal Immunology and Microbiota led by Professor Maria Rescigno at Humanitas University, Milan. Her research is focused on the evaluation of novel therapeutic strategies of Rifaximin, in the context of chemotherapy-induced intestinal injury. The aim of the project is to shed light on Rifaximin’s ability to confer protection on the intestinal epithelial and endothelial barrier and to understand if its contribution is mediated by the microbiota composition.
Virginia Amato
Virginia Amato is a medical biotechnologist with a three-year experience in research in the group led by Professor Nicasio Mancini at the Microbiology and Virology laboratory of “Vita-Salute” San Raffaele University. Her research work focused on the human microbiota of the gastrointestinal and genitourinary tract, particularly on the enteric microbiota in patients undergoing liver transplantation and on the vaginal microbiota in women with idiopathic infertility. At present, she is working as a Business Analyst in Life Sciences and Healthcare at Deloitte Consulting.
Stefania Blasa
Stefania Blasa is a Postdoc in “Converging Technologies for Biomolecular Systems” at University of Milan-Bicocca; she is interested in neurophysiology and works on in-vitro neuronal differentiation induced by innovative technologies. During her master thesis, she worked on the simultaneous detection of mutations responsible of peripheral nerve system genetic diseases.
Federica SpaggIari
Federica Spaggiari, after graduating in Biotechnology from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Federica is pursuing a Master’s in Translational Cancer Medicine at King’s College London. During the first part of the program, she spent six months in the Invasion and Metastasis research group led by Professor Claire Wells and studied the molecular mechanisms underlying oesophageal cancer. She is currently working in the Tumour Immunology lab supervised by Dr James Arnold where she is focusing on the optimization of CAR T-cell therapy for solid tumours. In September 2022 she will join the Cancer Biomarker Centre at CRUK Manchester Institute as a PhD student.
SOFIA SISTI
Sofia Sisti is a medical biotechnologist with a keen interest in the field of microbiology and virology.
During her master’s degree thesis, she worked on the identification of novel mutations involved in antimicrobial resistance mechanisms using different computational analysis.
She is attending the PhD course in Molecular Medicine in the Microbiology and Virology laboratory at “Vita-Salute” San Raffaele University. Her research focuses on the molecular characterization of SARS-CoV-2 variants infectivity in terms of cell infection kinetic and phenotypic evaluation of the spike protein mutants.
BENEDETTA GIULIANI
Benedetta Giuliani recently graduated in Biotechnology and Medical Biology at “Vita-Salute” San Raffaele University after a thesis internship in the group led by Dr. Nicola Clementi at the Microbiology and Virology laboratory. Then, she remained in the laboratory as a research assistant focusing her work on the characterization of the entry mechanisms of SARS-CoV-2 and the dissection of the antibody response elicited by both natural infection and vaccination.
ROBERTO FERRARESE
Roberto is a Post-doc researcher in the group led by Prof. Nicasio Mancini at the Laboratory of Microbiology and Virology, Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele. He obtained his Ph.D. in Molecular Medicine working on microbiota analysis. In particular, he has been involved in several studies that have investigated the role of microbiota in the pathogenesis and the development of different pathologies, such as prostate cancer, non-obstructive idiopathic azoospermia, bladder cancer, Lynch syndrome, multiple sclerosis and multiple myeloma. As a result of these studies, he published several papers on these topics on high impact factor journals.
Since 2020, he focused also on sequencing adnd study of SARS-CoV-2 virus.