Members

Hannes Schuler (PI)

2009 – 2010 M.Sc. Agriculture, Boku, Vienna, Austria

2009 M.Sc. Phytomedicine, Boku, Vienna, Austria

2012 Ph.D. Boku, Vienna, Austria

2012 – 2013 Postdoc, Boku, Austria

2013 – 2014 Research Assistant, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (UniBZ), Italy

2014 – 2016 Erwin Schrödinger Fellow, University of Notre Dame, USA

2016 – 2017 Postdoc, Boku, Austria

2017 – 2018 Research Assistant, Laimburg Research Centre, Italy

2018 – 2021 Assistant Professor (RTDb), UniBZ, Italy

2021 – Member of the Competence Centre for Plant Health, UniBZ, Italy

2021 – Associate Professor, UniBZ, Italy

I am an Associate Professor at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. My research focuses on the role of bacterial endosymbionts on different insects through molecular genetic analysis. In particular I am interested in understanding the dynamics of how economically harmful pest insects are introduced into new areas and how the new environment influences their bacterial endosymbionts.

Erika Corretto (Postdoc)

2012 M.Sc. Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy

2012 – 2017 Ph.D. Austrian Institute of Technology, Tulln, Austria

2018 – 2019 Postdoc (Mobility Grant) Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen, Germany

2017 – 2020 PostDoc Biology Centre CAS, Ceské Budejovice, Czech Republic

2020 – 2023 PostDoc Faculty of Science and Technology, UniBZ, Italy

2023 – Tecnologa, Competence Centre for Plant Health, UniBZ, Italy

My main research areas are microbiology, molecular biology and bacterial genomics. Previous projects focused on functional and comparative genomic analysis of Actinobacteria for the identification of secondary metabolite gene clusters. Such compounds are produced under specific environmental conditions and act as signaling molecules for the communication with different organisms. Currently I am investigating factors influencing phytoplasma transmission efficiencies in insect vectors through a combination of comparative genome sequencing and transmission experiments.

Lapo Ragionieri (Postdoc)

2005 M.Sc. Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy

2009 PhD Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy

2010 Junior Researcher, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy

2011 Junior Researcher, University of Milan, Italy

2011 – 2014 Postdoc Università di Averio, Portugal

2016 – 2023 Postdoc University of Cologne, Germany

2023 – PostDoc Competence Centre for Plant Health, UniBZ, Italy

Veronika Rau (Postdoc)

2018 M.Sc. University Freiburg, Germany

2023 PhD University Freiburg, Germany

2024 – PostDoc Competence Centre for Plant Health, UniBZ, Italy

In my PhD, I studied ageing and the fecundity/longevity trade-off in termites. My current research focuses on the symbionts and antagonists of the spruce bark beetle Ips typographus, especially on nematodes. I am investigating which species are occurring on and in bark beetles using genomic sequencing methods and analysing how the nematode community is influenced by location, altitude and generation.

Luciano Palmieri (Postdoc)

2012 M.Sc. University of Sao Paolo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil

2017 PhD University of Sao Paolo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil

2018 – 2019 PostDoc USDA, Madison, USA

2019 – 2022 PostDoc University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA

2024 – PostDoc Competence Centre for Plant Health, UniBZ, Italy

I am a Research Assistant at the Faculty of Agricultural, Environmental, and Food Sciences - UNIBZ. The focus of my research is on insects, with a particular interest in weevils. Using cutting-edge high-throughput sequencing and bioinformatics, I have begun to explore various aspects of the co-evolutionary association between weevils and their endosymbionts. More about my work can be found at https://www.lucianopalmieri.com/.

Yuanjie Li (Postdoc)

2015 M.Sc. Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

2023 Ph.D. University of Rennes, France

2023 – PostDoc Competence Centre for Plant Health, UniBZ, Italy

My previous project focused on the effect of climate change on cereal aphids. I compared thermal tolerance, gene expression, and metabolic response among three common cereal aphids to explain their dominance shift under climate change. Current I am investigating symbiont of insects in bark beetles and fruit flies. Especially I perform comparative genome studies of primary and secondary symbionts to understand the evolutionary history of the symbiont and its functional role.