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]: disease modelling using induced pluripotent stem cells; bioinformatics — differential gene expression (RNA-seq analysis) and reverse-engineering of genetic networks

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: Human diseases without humans
  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 studies of melanoma), in vitro models (using mostly IPS cells models of neurological diseases) and in silico models (using mostly toxicity studies).
  (Under the supervision of Giuseppe Testa)