Personal information

Nationality

Italian

Date of birth

26 Jul 1975

Gender

Male

Work experience

Dates

Nov 04 - Dec 08

Occupation or position held

postdoctoral fellowship

Main activities and responsibilities

Space/ground based microgravity research

Name and address of employer

CNR-ISTM

via Golgi, 19

20133 - Milano

Italy

Dates

Nov 02 - Nov 04

Occupation or position held

Fellowship

Main activities and responsibilities

Microgravity related research

Name and address of employer

CNR-ISTM

via Golgi, 19

20133 Milano

Italy

Dates

Mar 93 - Jul 95

Occupation or position held

PC software instructor

Main activities and responsibilities

Part time educational software salesperson trainer.

Name and address of employer

RCS - Milano

Education and training

Dates

Jul 02

Title of qualification awarded

2nd Level Degree

Principal subjects / occupational skills covered

Inorganic/Analytical chemistry.

Name and type of organisation providing education and training

Università degli Studi di Milano

Milan, Italy

Level in national or international classification

ISCED 5

Technical skills and competences

Microgravity related competences

In the frame of FOTON-M3 (Sept. 2007) space mission, I actively worked on the design, set up, and exploitation of SCORE (Saccharomyces Cerevisiae Oxidative Response Experiment).

My tasks were:

-To select a suitable space experiment via on ground tests.

-To design an automated system to culture and fixate yeast cells in space.

-To provide scientific support to Thales Alenia Space in order to build up the designed system.

-To work at the final preparation of the experiment (5 days before the launch).

-To analyze the samples retrieved after FOTON-M3 mission.

The space experiment was completely successful and data will be published soon.

Thanks to my past work experience I have a very good knowledge of microgravity simulators (Rotating Wall Vessels, Random Positioning Machine, clinostat.

My experience working with microgravity simulators allowed my group and me to develop and patent a novel microgravity simulator: the NMR-compatible reduced gravity simulation based bioreactor (NRG).

Analytical techniques

-High Field NMR

-Solid State NMR

-NMR MOUSE (MObile Universal Surface Explorer)

-HPLC

-Fluorimetric spectroscopy

-Fluorescence microscopy

-Conventional optical microscopy

-Confocal optical microscopy

Cell cultures

-Stem cells culture, adherent, in standard conditions and in simulated microgravity with Random Positioning Machine (Desktop RPM).

-Human endothelial cell culture (HUVEC) in standard conditions, in gravity on micro carrier beads, in simulated microgravity with Random Positioning Machine (Desktop RPM) and with Rotating Wall Vessel (RWV) and in hyper gravity (MIDIcar) and techniques as Western blotting, immunofluorescence, etc..

-Lymphoma U937 cell culture in standard conditions, in simulated microgravity in Random Positioning Machine (Desktop RPM) and with Rotating Wall Vessel (RWV) and in hyper gravity (MIDIcar).

-Biotechnological cell culture as Saccharomyces and Aspergillus.

-Biotechnological applications: development of new bioreactors for animal and vegetal cell culture.