Livio Ruzzante, Ph.D.
Computational & Field Biologist

I am a quantitative biologist: I use statistics, models and code to understand the living world. What drives me is biodiversity, the variety of life in every ecosystem, and the many ways it shapes, and is shaped by, human activity. I am especially passionate about conservation biology, above all insects and marine life.

I particularly enjoy pairing my time in front of the computer with hands-on work, at the laboratory bench and out in the field. This mix of skills has taken me through genomics, clinical research, agriculture and ecology, from maize fields in Rwanda to vineyards in Argentina and France.

After a PhD in computational biology at the University of Lausanne, I took these skills into medicine. As a biostatistician in intensive care at Bern University Hospital, I analysed data from thousands of patients alongside the doctors who treated them. Today I work with the University of Geneva's Group of Applied Physics at Agroscope's research station in Nyon, where physicists, biologists and agronomists work side by side. There I develop forecasting tools that warn winegrowers when their vines are at risk of disease, so they can protect their harvest with fewer pesticide treatments.

Across all of these settings, what I enjoy most is following a question from start to finish: from samples collected in the field, to the model that makes sense of them, to a tool that helps a grower or a clinician make better decisions.