Curriculum Vitae

Lab work (by lab group):

• Luisa Lanfrancone (IEO): basic culture techniques with melanoma cell lines
• Marina Mione (IFOM): drug screening using a zebrafish model of melanoma; fish husbandry; microscopy
• Saverio Minucci (IEO) & Gioacchino Natoli (IEO): bioinformatics — transcription factors binding sites (ChIP-seq analysis)
• Giuseppe Testa (IEO) [MAIN LAB - ongoing]: I joined a project of modelling a neurological disease using induced pluripotent stem cells. My main contributions are in the study of differential gene expression (RNA-seq analysis) and their link to epigenetic modifications, as well as in the reverse-engineering of gene regulatory networks on the basis of expression data

Topics in philosophy:

• Epistemology
• Philosophy of biology
• Science & Technology Studies (STS)
• Bioethics and social issues: science funding, expertise, new genetics, DTC medical services

Thesis project: Diseases without patients? Disease modelling and the problem of extrapolation
  The topic of my thesis is disease modelling, more precisely the extrapolation from pathological model systems (in a large sense) to human. I argue against an exclusively analogical view of disease models and compare different approaches of disease modelling: in vivo models (using mostly animal and xenograft models of melanoma), in vitro models (with an emphasis on IPS cells models of neurological diseases) and in silico models (mostly gene regulatory networks).
  (Under the supervision of Giuseppe Testa)