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Allegra Via is an Associate Professor at Sapienza University of Rome. Trained in physics and bioinformatics, she integrates structural biology, genomics, and machine learning to investigate variants associated with diseases, drug resistance, infectious diseases, and complex genetic traits. Active in training at both the national and international levels, she has established and coordinated the ELIXIR-IT Training Platform and currently leads the ELIXIR Train the Trainer programme, promoting innovation in education.

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.

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.

Dr. Flaviana Marzano is a Researcher at the Institute of Biomembranes, Bioenergetics and Molecular Biotechnologies of the National Research Council (IBIOM-CNR). Her scientific work focuses on molecular and cellular biology, with particular emphasis on the regulation of gene expression under physiological and pathological conditions. Over the years, she has developed extensive expertise in Genomics and Transcriptomics, contributing to the development and implementation of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) protocols. She has taken part in numerous national and international research projects and is co-author of publications in indexed, peer-reviewed journals, collaborating with multidisciplinary teams.

Master degree in Computer Science. Bioinformatician from 2001 in CNR-ITB, Bari. Expertise in Research Data Management; design and development of biological database and data integration tools; application of FAIR principles for data and metadata standardization. Expert in DataCenter management for the storage and processing of Life Science-oriented data. Competences in development of pipelines for the analysis of omics data. In ELIXIR-IT RDM Community co-leader and Interoperbility plaform deputy in ELIXIR-IT.

Giacinto Donvito has a long-standing experience in coordinating and operating complex, distributed computing infrastructures for scientific research. Since 2004, he has served as system administrator of the CMS and Alice Tier-2 computing centre at INFN-Bari. Over the years, he has played key technical and coordination roles in several European projects, including acting as Technical Coordinator for H2020 INDIGO-DataCloud, eXtreme DataCloud, and EOSC-Hub. Giacinto has been actively involved in numerous EGEE and EGI initiatives, as well as national and international bioinformatics projects, supporting diverse scientific communities. He has contributed to the EGI Federated Cloud since its inception and led the implementation of a PaaS layer in the H2020 DEEP-HybridDataCloud project. Currently, Giacinto is engaged in multiple H2020 and Horizon Europe projects, such as EOSC-Life, DICE, EGI-ACE, C-Scale, InterTwin, AI4EOSC, and EuroScienceGateway. On the national level, he has led three major infrastructural projects funded by the Italian Ministry of Research, supporting scientific applications in fields like physics, bioinformatics, and biodiversity, with a total budget of around 12 million euros. He is also local coordinator for several PNRR projects, responsible for implementing cloud and HPC platforms with investments of about 10 million euros. Giacinto is the Technical Coordinator of the EOSC Italian Node, leading cross-node use cases with CERN, BBMRI, and Elixir-IT, and represents INFN in the Italian ELIXIR and Lifewatch nodes. He also coordinates the ReCaS-Bari Data Center and leads the ELIXIR-IT Compute Platform, where he contributed to the Laniakea@ReCaS Galaxy on-demand service.

Luana is associate professor at the Department of Biology of the University of Rome Tor Vergata and the coordinator of MINT, the Molecular INTeraction database. MINT is part of the ELIXIR-Core Data Resources and of the Global Biodata Coalition Resources. She also co-coordinated the SIGNOR database (ELIXIR-IT service), a resource that annotates causal relationships between biological entities. Her research activity focuses on the analysis of the impact of pathogenic variants at the molecular interactions level to understanding the relationships between genotype and phenotype and characterize the molecular mechanisms underlying diseases.

Pier Luigi Martelli is Full professor of Biochemistry at the University of Bologna. His research interests focuses on the computational study of the relation between sequence, structure, and function in proteins and on the development of analysis tools based on Machine Learning (deep neural networks, hidden Markov models, support vector machines) freely available to the scientific community (www.biocomp.unibo.it/predictors) and integrated with the tool ecosystem of ELIXIR. He is currently the coordinator of the Interoperability platform of ELIXIR-IT.

Ernesto Picardi is Full Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of bari Aldo Moro and works is in the field of Omic Sciences, Bioinformatics and Molecular Evolution. He deals with the development of new bioinformatics methodologies and specialized databases to investigate transcriptome and epitranscriptome dynamics in eukaryotic genomes. His research activity focuses on the analysis of transcriptomic and epitranscripromic data produced through novel massive sequencing technologies for the study of gene expression and post-transcriptional modifications such as alternative splicing, RNA editing and RNA modifications.

Marinella Marzano, phD, is a biologist specialized in Molecular Biology and Bioinformatics, with extensive experience in genomic analyses, particularly metagenomics, and molecular biodiversity. She is a researcher at the Institute of Biomembranes, Bioenergetics and Molecular Biotechnologies (IBIOM) of the National Research Council (CNR) in Bari, where she focuses on the development, optimization, and application of genomic methodologies based on Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies, as well as on the bioinformatic analysis of biological sequences. Her research interests include the taxonomic and functional characterization of microorganisms from environmental and clinical samples, with the aim of exploring the impact of the microbiome on living systems. She is the author of publications in international peer-reviewed journals and actively contributes to numerous regional, national, and international research projects, taking on various responsibilities and maintaining a strong focus on innovation and applied research. In addition to her research activities, she is involved in the design and implementation of Quality Management Systems (QMS) inspired by Good Laboratory Practices (GLP) and participates in the development of innovative biotechnology projects, fostering collaboration between research and industry.

He is a theoretical physicist with a strong passion for exploring Deep Learning and Artificial Intelligence. At Area Science Park, he holds the position of Staff Development Scientist and Technologist, where his work focuses primarily on theoretical and practical research in Deep Learning representations, specifically targeting applications within the Life Sciences sector. Previously, he contributed to interdisciplinary research at the International School of Advanced Studies (SISSA), integrating fields such as Neurobiology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Physics, and Machine Learning. Since 2020, he has been actively involved in academia, teaching a course on Deep Learning at the University of Trieste. Additionally, he lectures on the fundamentals of Deep Learning in the Master in High-Performance Computing program, jointly conducted by SISSA and ICTP.

Andrea Loria is a professional biologist currently serving as a technical-professional collaborator at the Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale (IZS) for Piedmont, Liguria, and Valle d'Aosta. Since 2018, he has managed research projects within the Grant Office, overseeing over 110 active projects. He holds a degree in Agricultural and Plant Biotechnology and has extensive experience in food safety and laboratory techniques like PCR and ELISA. Additionally, he is a national volleyball official and regional instructor for FIPAV.