PEOPLE

Members of the Animal and Food Genomics Group of the Department of Agricultural and Food Sciences - University of Bologna.

Luca Fontanesi

Luca Fontanesi

Full Professor of animal breeding and genetics (University of Bologna)

Full Professor of animal breeding and genetics at the University of Bologna. He works in the fields of animal genetics and breeding, animal genomics and authenticity of food products. His research interests are mainly towards the application of genomics, metagenomics, metabolomics and phenomics in the animal production sector, for food characterization, authentication and traceability and for environmental characterization. His research activities include all main livestock species (pig, cattle, sheep, goat, horse, donkey, rabbit, poultry) aquaculture species, wild and extinct animal species, honey bees and other insects and environmental DNA. He has been involved or he is still involved in several national and international research projects, including Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe. He has published more than 260 peer reviewed scientific papers (h index = 37), several book chapters and a few patents. He is sector editor of several scientific journals in the animal science sector. He is listed in the World's Top Scientists 2022 (Stanford University).

Mohamad Ballan

Mohamad Ballan

PhD Student / Dry Lab

Matteo Bolner

Matteo Bolner

PhD Student / Dry Lab

Samuele Bovo

Samuele Bovo

Junior Assistant Professor / Dry Lab

Samuele Bovo obtained his master's degree with Laude in Bioinformatics at the University of Bologna in the year 2013, discussing a thesis on "Biomarkers Identification in Pig: Metabolomics meets Genomics for the characterization of an animal model". At the same university, he obtained in the year 2018 a PhD in Biotechnological and Pharmaceutical Sciences (focused on Bioinformatics) discussing a thesis on the "Development of computational methods for biological complexity". He is a former member of the Bologna Biocomputing Group (led by Prof. Rita Casadio), where he developed tools relying on protein-protein interaction networks for the analysis of genomic, proteomic and metabolomic data.

His main activities (carried out in the laboratory of Prof. Luca Fontanesi) regard the analysis of omic data (genomes, proteomes, metabolomes and metagenomes) from different animals (pigs, cattle, rabbits, fishes and bees) and their derivates (meat, milk, cheese and honey). 

Stefania Dall'Olio

Stefania Dall'Olio

Associate Professor

Anisa Ribani

Anisa Ribani

Junior Assistant Professor / Wet Lab


Anisa is a molecular biologist working in a Post-Doc Position. She got her PhD in Agricultural, Environmental, Food Science and Technologies in 2017 and she currently works in animal science and genomics in livestock and wild species. She is also involved in projects related to genetic authentication of food products. 

Giuseppina Schiavo

Giuseppina Schiavo

Junior assistant professor / Dry Lab

Valeria Taurisano

Valeria Taurisano

PhD Student / Wet Lab

Valeria is an Evolutionary Biologist, now PhD student at Department of Agriculture, Environmental and Food Science and Technology at the University of Bologna.
Her work is focused on genetics and genomics applied to livestock and wild species. Research activities include also food characterization, authentication and traceability.
She is currently working on several projects regarding livestock genomics, apiculture genomics, aquaculture genomics and environmental genomics.

Valerio Joe Utzeri

Valerio Joe Utzeri

Research fellow - external collaborator / Wet Lab

I am a biologist mainly interested in the evolution and systematics of different animal and plant classes. I am interested also in the comparison between natural and artificial selection in order to detect changes in wild and domesticated animal genomes. I work also in the food genomics field.

Francesca Bertolini

Francesca Bertolini

Associate Professor of animal breeding and genetics

Paolo Zambonelli

Paolo Zambonelli

Associate Professor of animal breeding and genetics

Jacopo Vegni

Jacopo Vegni

Research fellow