Say hi to our team

Anna Marabotti is Deputy of the Training Platform of ELIXIR-IT. She obtained a PhD in Biochemical Sciences (2001) from the University of Turin, and she is Associate Professor at the Dept. Chemistry and Biology “A. Zambelli” of the University of Salerno. Her research interests concern studies of structure-dynamics-function relationships of proteins of prevalent interest in the biomedical field (with a special focus on proteins involved in rare diseases), and characterization of their interactions with ligands, using structural bioinformatics approaches.

Arnold has an MSc in Applied Physics. At the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS) in Rome since 1994. For seven years he has worked on quantitative data analysis of magnetic resonance spectra, before an experience of sixteen years in the ISS Data Center working on architecture, development and management of (bio)informatics systems. Since 2017 he joined the Department of food safety, nutrition and veterinary public health (DSANV) and is involved in the management and development of the ARIES Galaxy platform for the analysis of biomedical data, the IRIDA-ARIES platforms for the surveillance of several foodborne diseases, the development and integration of (bio)informatical systems and data analysis in general. ELIXIR-IT Local Technical Coordinator for the ISS since 2019.

Bruno Fosso is Associate Professore in Molecular Biology at University of Bari Aldo Moro and Leader of the ELIXIR-IT Tools platform. He obtained a PhD in Bioinformatics in 2014 at the University of Bari discussing a thesis about the deplotyment of a workflow for DNA-metabarcodingd data analysis.The metagenomic investigation of host-associated microbiomes and environmental prokaryotic communities is the main topic of his research activity. He is an active member of the BITS, SIBBM, ISCB and ELIXIR Microbiome Community. He is author of about 50 papers on international journals.

Castrense Savojardo is Associate Professor of Bioinformatics at the Department of Pharmacy and Biotechnology, University of Bologna. His research focuses on the development of computational methods based on artificial intelligence and machine learning to predict protein structure, function, and localization, with a special emphasis on membrane proteins and the impact of mutations. He is actively involved in the European infrastructure ELIXIR, serving as national deputy leader of the Tools platform and contributing to the 3DBioInfo Community and the Machine Learning Focus Group.

Chiara Bruno is part of the ELIXIR Italy Communication, Impact, and Industry & Innovation teams. She graduated in Biomedical Sciences from Royal Holloway, University of London, and later specialized in Science Communication with a Master’s degree. With experience in managing social media, creating digital content, and coordinating outreach activities, she combines scientific knowledge with strategic communication skills.

Claudio focused his university studies in the field of Biology and has a PhD in Biomedical and Cytomorphological Sciences. PhD thesis entitled: Molecular basis of Noonan syndrome. Senior Researcher at the National Centre for Rare Diseases (RDs), Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy. He currently works on data management for RDs, particularly on data Findable Accessible Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR) for humans and computers. ELIXIR-IT Local Technical Coordinator and co-lead community RDs.

Claudio is the Head of the Computational Biology Unit of the Research and Innovation Centre of the Fondazione Edmund Mach. After a PhD in Physics he has worked on bacterial comparative genomics, pathogen epidemiology and bacterial antigen discovery. His current research activity includes the use of metagenomic sequencing to characterise microbial diversity in environmental and host-associated samples.

Damiano Piovesan is a highly accomplished professional in computational biology, holding a Ph.D. in bioinformatics and over a decade of research experience. As an Associate Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Padua, his work focuses on the structural and functional aspects of complex biological systems, with a particular emphasis on non-globular proteins and modern machine learning approaches. He has developed software tools to predict protein features and has been actively involved in international initiatives aimed at standardizing data and promoting best practices for unbiased modeling. His research has recently expanded to investigate the critical link between cancer and intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs). Beyond his research, he is committed to training the next generation of data scientists, teaching courses in structural bioinformatics and biological data.

Daniela is a Senior Researcher at IBSBC-CNR, where she leads the ISBE Metabolomics Infrastructure within the ELIXIR network. Her work bridges multi-omics innovation with translational science, uncovering how environmental and dietary exposures rewire metabolism and shape cancer risk. She applies a One Health perspective to connect biology, environment, lifestyle and prevention in an integrated vision of sustainable health.

Full Professor of Industrial Microbiology and Chemistry of Fermentation. The main scientific activity aims to the understanding of the basic knowledge required to project industrial processes involving microorganisms. These studies include the genetic improvement of microbial strains of industrial interest, metabolic engineering, synthetic biology, control and validation of fermentation processes in use in the pharmaceutical, food and environmental industry. The research group has developed, patented and licensed the technology for production and secretion of heterologous proteins, lactic acid, ascorbic acid, PLA and for the selection of mutant strains over producing organic acids.

Diego di Bernardo received his "Laurea cum laude" in Electronic Engineering in 1997 from the University of Naples "Federico II". In 2001, thanks to a 3-year European Commission “Marie Curie” Fellowship, he was awarded a PhD in Medical Physics from the University of Newcastle School of Medicine, UK (lab of Prof. Alan Murray). He was a postdoctoral researcher first at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Center in Cambridge (UK) with Dr. Tim Hubbard and then in the laboratory of Prof. Jim Collins at Boston University, USA. In 2003, he became a Principal Investigator at TIGEM, where he also acts as Coordinator of the Genomic Medicine Program and Supervisor of the Bioinformatics Core. In 2007, he became Assistant Professor in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Naples "Federico II", in 2015 Associate Professor and then Full Professor in 2022. His research interests are strongly cross-disciplinary, blending Biomedical and Control Engineering with Molecular and Cell Biology. His lab has developed integrated experimental and computational approaches to reverse engineer gene networks and for computational drug repositioning. His lab is currently pioneering Synthetic Biology apporaches in mammalian cells to advance gene therapy. He is the author of over 100 publications in international scientific journals. His research has been funded by Telethon, AIRC, Italian Ministries of Research and Health, HFSP, by the European Union and by the ERC.

Diego is a Computational Biologist specialized in plant, currently serving as a Researcher at the Fondazione Edmund Mach (FEM) in Trento, Italy, since 2016. His research focuses on the analysis of whole-genome sequencing data for de novo assembly and variant discovery, and developing molecular markers for QTL mapping, population genomics, and association mapping. He is contributing to the development of pipelines for filtering high-throughput genotyping data and analyzing sequences from MinION and Illumina platforms. Before my current role, Diego was a Postdoctoral Researcher at IRTA in Spain (2011–2013) for the Fruitbreedomics project, where I performed QTL mapping and GWAS in Peach. He hold a PhD (2008–2011) from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (2011), and a Master's degree from the University of Padua (2007).