Laura Zucconi Galli Fonseca (h-index 33) is Associate Professor in Botany from 2005. She has been involved in Antarctic Research projects from 1992 both as PI or responsible of RU, as well as in projects in other extreme environments, as the Arctic (INTERACT-Horizon 2020) and Alps (PRIN 2015, PRIN 2019, PRIN 2022). She joined the 2014 Arctic expedition (Ny-Ålesund) and six Italian Antarctic Expeditions (XIX, XXVI, XXXI, XXXIII, XXXV, XXXVII), appointed by the Italian National Research Council (CNR) as Scientific Coordinator of the research activities carried out at the Italian Base during the XXVI, XXXV, and XXXVII Expeditions. Member of the Editorial Board of Section ‘Extreme Microbiology’ in Frontiers in Microbiology. Guest Associate Editor of two topics for Frontiers in Microbiology and two topics for Biology (MDPI).
Her scientific activity focuses on microbial ecology, in particular on Antarctic soil and cryptoendolithic communities distribution, biodiversity and adaptation to different stresses. In the last years, her research is being extended in a deeper analysis of soil microbial communities through molecular approaches, to describe the effects of environmental conditions on their composition, functionality and adaptability. Her research activities range among different fields: systematic and taxonomy of filamentous fungi, ultrastructural morphology, molecular biology, astrobiology, adaptive responses to stress conditions – including real and simulated space conditions – of both single species and whole fungal communities.

http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9793-2303    Web of Science ResearcherID: U-9781-2018