PEOPLE

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 270 peer reviewed scientific papers (h index = 42), 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 2023 (Stanford University).

My expertizes fall into the wide umbrella of genetics and genomics of livestock and aquaculture species. I have developed deep experiences in wet lab, initiating and managing two next-generation sequencing laboratories (in Bologna and Messina, Italy) as well as bioinformatic data analyses. Here, I have conducted projects related to QTL detection, food autentication, population genomics and functional genomics in several animal species (pigs, cattle, rabbits, goats, and fish, as well as companion species). Currently, I am interested in integrating multi. omic data for selection, traceability, conservation and valorization of animal species with economical relevance.

During my career I have spent a long time abroad:

- Belgium: KU Leuven, 8 months, visiting scholar

- United States: Iowa State University, 3 years, postdoctoral research associate and lab manager

-Denmark: Technical University of Denmark, 4 and half years, Associate Professor.

On September 5th 2022 I have begun my new position at the University of Bologna.

SCOPUS (ID: 57217856306): 83 publications, 1193 citations e h-index = 19 (24/02/2023).

I graduated in Biological Sciences in 2018 at the University of Bologna, with the thesis "Cloning of the Feronia gene in a construct for recombinant expression in E. coli"

In the same university I then graduated cum laude at the International Bologna Master in Bioinformatics in 2021, with a thesis titled "Curation and mining of public datasets of whole genome sequencing for applications in livestock genomics"

After the master's graduation I interned for five months at the SCAI (Supercomputing applications and innovation) department of CINECA [https://www.hpc.cineca.it/], where I worked on software containerization for HPC systems.

Currently, I am a PhD candidate working on "Applied genomics for sustainable animal production systems" at the Animal and Food Genomics group, in the Department of Agricutural and Food Sciences of the University of Bologna.

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). 

I am an evolutionary molecular biologist working as Assistant Professor at University of Bologna. I got my PhD in Agricultural, Environmental, Food Science and Technologies in 2017 and I currently work in animal science and genomics in livestock and wild species. I am also involved in projects related to genetic authentication of animal food products.

Main research topics and skills: The main topic of research is genomic analysis for the identification of markers related to meat quality and production. Analysis of data coming from next generation sequence technologies. Sample collection in the abattoir and subsequent samples processing, computational analysis of resulting data by managing alignment tools, population genetics, statistical tools; SNPcalling, population genetics analyses. Programming languages: good knowledge of bash scripting, Python, “R”  Good knowledge of the most used bioinformatics tools and databases: Blast, ClustalW, Modeller, ProCheck, RasMol; Ensembl, Uniprot, UCSC genome browser, HapMap. Basic knwoledge of alignment managing and population genetics tools: BWA, SAMtools, PHASE, Haploview, Structure

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.

In 2019, after the Master's degree in Animal Biotechnologies, he was started the PhD in Agricultural, Environmental and Food Sciences and Technology, Animal Science curriculum (35th cycle) and obtained it in July 2023. The research topic is livestock farming, in particular the study of the genetic mechanisms underlying pig's meat quality

Dalal Sami

Mohamad Ballan (PhD and Post-Doc)

Michela Colombo (PhD)

Claudia Geraci (PhD)

Hamed Kazemi (PhD)

Giulia Moscatelli (PhD)

Silvia Tinarelli (PhD)

Valerio Joe Utzeri (PhD and Post-Doc)

El-Sayed M. Abdel-Kafy (Egypt)

Zsuzsanna Bosze (Hungary)

Mihajla Djan (Serbia)

Parisa Dolati (Iran)

Elen Gocza (Hungary)

Carles Hernández i Banqué (Spain)

Pilar Hernandez (Spain)

Nemat Hedayat (Iran)

Laszlo Hiripi (Hungary)

Orsolya Ivett Hoffmann (Hungary)

Kate Elise Johnson (Fulbright fellowship - USA)

Péter Major (Hungary)

Maryam Nosrati (Iran)

Ayça ÖZKAN KOCA (Turkey)

Aneta Piplica (Croatia)

Alma Rahmanović (Bosnia and Herzegovina)

Jing Sun (China)

Nevena Veličković (Serbia)

Urška Vesenjak (Slovenia)

Yang Wang (China)

Ivanova Zhenya (Bulgaria)