Currently, I am a plant health researcher at the European Food Safety Authority, where we work on risk assessment of plant pests.

I studied Forest and Environmental Sciences (University of Turin, Italy and ETHZ, Switzerland), with a PhD on biodiversity (University of Sheffield, UK). I then did research on tree diseases (e.g. modelling the spread of Phytophthora ramorum) in England (Imperial College London) and seed exchange networks to conserve biodiversity in France (CNRS).

My knowledge in tree pathology goes back to studying at ETH Zurich, where my MSc thesis supervisor was Ottmar Holdenrieder, with whom I then collaborated over several years on many projects, e.g. on ash dieback. Recent forest pathology publications include various EFSA pest categorisations of quarantine forest fungi, an essay about extreme events and forest protection, and a book chapter on tree diseases as ecological disturbance.

My work has attempted (i) to connect forest pathology with new methodological developments, e.g. in network epidemiology, (ii) to improve our understanding of the implications of global change for tree health, and (iii) to investigate the conservation biology consequences of emerging tree diseases.