She obtained the Ph.D title in Environmental Sciences in 2013 from the University of Messina and spent six years as postdoctoral researcher at the University of Messina, Department CHIBIOFARAM. Since 2019, she is Researcher at the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Department of Marine Biotechnology. Research activities are mainly focused on microbial ecology, specifically focused on prokaryotic diversity, bacterial bioprospecting for the research of marine natural products to be applied in the biomedical and environmental field (in temperate and polar habitats). Particular interest is paid to the association of bacteria with filter-feeding organisms and mainly oriented to the study of bioactive molecules. She has improved her laboratory skills during several stays in foreign institutions, i.e. Karlsruhe Institute of Biotechnology (Germany), and Centro de Ciências do Mar Universidade do Algarve (Portugal).
She participated to oceanographic cruises in the Mediterranean Sea and to the 34th Antarctic Campaign at the Italian Research Station Mario Zucchelli. She has competence in drafting experimental designs, formulation of research aims and profiling of plans for data collection and analysis, interpretation and presentation of statistical findings, biostatistical analyses. She attended specialized courses on microbial metagenome analysis, cultivation and new-generation molecular methods, liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry methods.
To date, she is involved in research projects on polar topics (Arctic and Antarctic microbiology). She is Topic Editorial Board Member of the open-access journals Environments, and is author or co-author of more than thirty papers in peer-reviewed journals (h-index 10, 284 citations).

Scopus - Author ID: 55619021900