Born in Messina, she obtained her Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences at the University of Messina (2016) presenting the thesis PCB-oxidising bacteria from Arctic and Antarctic environments. She is a member of the eLTER H2020 Starting Communities project group and of the Association of Polar Early Career scientists APECS group.
Currently, she is coordinating the PNRA18_00194 Microbial response to human Pollutants in polAr lakeS-MicroPolArS project and the INTERACT Mercury concentration and tolerant microorganisms in Arctic SNOW: new Bioremediation chALLenges – SNOW BALL project. She actively participates in national and international research projects on topics related to microbial ecology and biotechnology in polar environments. Particular interest is directed to the use of molecular tools for the study of biodiversity and the functionality of microbial communities, with attention to the ability to degrade polluting compounds. As part of projects focused on microbiology in polar environments, she has participated in sampling campaigns in the Arctic and Antarctica, as well as oceanographic cruises in the Mediterranean.
She specializes in: the treatment of microbiological samples of various origins; the use of molecular tools for bacterial biodiversity and DNA/RNA probe hybridization; analysis of microbial communities (metagenomics) by next-generation sequencing; differential expression and statistical validation of RNA-seq data; estimation of microbial biomass; screening of bacteria for the production of molecules of biotechnological interest and for the ability to degrade polluting compounds. She has had the opportunity to perfect her bioinformatics and laboratory skills also thanks to numerous stays in foreign institutes including Sequentia biotech (Barcelona, ​​Spain), the University of Jyvaskyla (Finland), and the University of Valencia (Spain). She is the author or co-author of numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals, including Scientific Reports, Science of the Total Environment, Soil Biology and Biochemistry, PLOS One, Applied and Environmental Microbiology, Microbial Ecology, and more than 30 communications at national and international conferences.

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6013-4436    Research Gate