MAIN INFORMATION:

· RESEARCHER WITH 15 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE AFTER PhD

· TEACHING AT UNIVERSITY IN THE FIELD OF FOOD MICROBIOLOGY AND APPLIED STATISTICS

· RESEARCH ACTIVITY FOCUSING IN DIFFERENT FIELDS OF FOOD MICROBIOLOY.

· DEGREE IN FOOD SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY AND PhD IN FOOD BIOTECHNOLOGY

WORK EXPERIENCE:

Associate Professor in Food Microbiology (from December 23^rd 22018), DAFNE Department, University of Foggia.

· Senior Researcher in Food Microbiology (from December 23^rd 2015 to December 22^nd 2015), Department of the Science of Agriculture, Food and Environment, University of Foggia.

· Junior Researcher in Food Microbiology, Department of the Science of Agriculture, Food and Environment, University of Foggia (April 1^st 2014-December 22^nd 2015).

· Post-doc fellowship (from June 16^th 2008 to April 1^st 2014), researcher in the Dept. of Food Science, University of Foggia.

· May 1st 2006-April 30th 2008, post-doctoral fellowship in the Dept. of Food Science. The topic of the fellowship was the characterization of water-buffalo mozzarella cheese of Apulian region (Southern Italy). Supervisor: prof. Milena Sinigaglia, Head of the Dept. of Food Science (m.sinigaglia@unifg.it).

TEACHING:

· Food Microbiology

· Hygiene

· Food Fermentation

RESEARCH TOPICS:

My research activity involves some topics of Food Microbiology; in particular, I focused on the following issues:

· Phenotyping and genotyping of some strains of Alicyclobacillus acidoterrestris from soil and evaluation of some alternative methodologies to reduce the initial contamination of alicyclobacilli in fruit juices.

· Evaluation of the bioactivity of essential oils and other natural compounds (friendly compounds) (eugenol, cinnamaldehyde, lysozyme, nisin, thymol, limonene) both in laboratory media and in foods as suitable means to control the growth of spoiling microorganisms and foodborne pathogens.

· Use of the High Pressure Homogenization and Ultrasound as a non-thermal approach for the microbial stabilization of foods.

· Microbiota of table olives, sourdough and juices

· Microencapsulation of lactic acid bacteria and yeasts in alginate beads.

· Predictive Microbiology, focusing in particular on the use of Designs of Experiments, shelf life evaluation through different mathematical models, use of growth and death kinetics for data fitting.

· Starter cultures for different raw materials (meat, fish, sourdough, olives etc…)

· Ochratoxin A removal by yeasts

· Bioremediation of Olive Mill Wastewater

· Probiotic microorganisms

· Attenuation

LANGUAGES:

· ENGLISH – Good Knowledge writing and reading – Good Knowledge speaking

· ITALIAN – Mother tongue

OTHER RELEVANT SKILLS:

Other interesting details for the evaluation of my CV are the following:

· Good knowledge of the most important softwares for statistical treatment of data (predictive microbiology, multivariate analyses).

· 300 papers published in International or Italian journals (208 on Scopus, h-index 34; citations, 4352).

· Director of Food Science and Technology Master Degree

· Member of the Editorial Boards of Several International Journals

· Reviewer for project proposal (UK, Czech Republic, Kazakhstan)

EDUCATION and TRAINING:

· Award as best researcher in Agro-Food Microbiology in 2014-15

· Qualification as Associate Professor (from 2013)

· PhD in “Food Biotechnology” (November 2002-April 2006) with a thesis in food Microbiology focusing on the technological, phenotypical and genotypical characterization of lactic acid bacteria isolated from Italian table olives “Bella di Cerignola” (Dept. of Food Science, University of Foggia-supervisor. Prof. Milena Sinigaglia).