My passion for science started when I was just 10 year-old, very curious and a little bit hyperactive (ask my sister...). To release such energy my mother bought me a book entitled "Science: games and experiments" which described easy experiments to discover physics, chemistry and biology.

Once finished the book I started to put in practice all that I learnt. To make the story short, my parents regretted for the nice book they gave me since I almost burned down my house playing with a magnifing lens....anyways...crazy scientist...

At the beginning of high-school, a great biology professor boosted my interest for biology showing me possible scenarios opened by molecular biology. I was only 15 when I had decided that I wanted to study biotechnology, attracted by its applications for health and society.

In 1999, I moved to Bologna to study Biotechnology which was, at that time, the best place to study this subject. I spent 3 great years in Bologna where I met some of my best friends and where I definitely enjoyed night-student-life while getting "some scientific knowledge".

Hungry for travelling, in 2002 I applied for erasmus programme and I was accepted to University of Barcelona (School of Pharmacy). A great experience which really opens my possibility of studying/working abroad and a good chance to learn a new language. Just becuase Europe was not enough in 2003 I moved to San Diego (CA) where I found an opportunity to develop my Master Thesis. That was a joint-venture project between UCSD and Cosmo Bioscience, a start-up biotech company. The thesis was about developing, through ribosome display, mimiking peptides of human TNF-alpha which were able to generate an immune response against the cytokine. Luckly, to carry out this work, I obtained a fellowship from University of Bologna and from Cosmo Pharmaceutical, an italian pharmaceutical company based in Milan.

In July 2005, I finally graduated!! The party that I gave for my graduation was just...insane! Anyway.., I was offered a position at Cosmo Bioscience and in september 2005 I went back to California for another 8 months. In april 2006 I finally moved back to my country because I was applying for Ph.D programs in Europe. Suddenly, in september 2006 I found myself at Institut Pasteur with a Marie Curie Fellowship within the Structural Bioinformatic Unit, directed by Prof.Michael Nilges, my thesis director as well.

My project involves the in-silico design of inhibitory small-proteins against Plasmodium Falciparum. Honestly, I love this project!! After all, I have been always attracted by the possibility to engineer proteins to obtain new molecules with new properties (passion for synthetic biology too..) and, hopefully, pharmacological activity.

This is my story, probably very official...then there is the unofficial part which becomes more fun and interesting...but it is a kind of...private ;-).