Profile

I’m doing a PhD at the Roslin Institute, the one became famous because of Dolly the sheep. It is actually the place where Dolly was cloned. I started my research career later in life since I worked before doing different jobs ( I wanted to become an airline pilot, but couldn’t join the flight academcy because I have miopy) , but then realised that discovering mechanisms and understanding of phenomena was what I wanted to do. I live in Edinburgh at the moment, I’m Italian, from Naples, the city of music, pizza, sun and sea from southern Italy. Altough science is my first business, I also love my other interests like playing and composing  music with my piano and keyboards, sports and cooking. I define myself as a creative thinker, my mind just never stop to imagine things and at the end of day I’m happy only if I know that I have built, creat or learnt a new thing during the day!

My work is based mainly on research on the mechanisms that induce inflammation in the lung. I’m working to a project involved in protecting the lung from radiation used for lung cancer treatment. The greater issue today for lung radiotherapy is the onset of collateral effects. We at Roslin, are aiming to better protecting the lung using specific nanoparticles. The study is made on sheep (not all sheep unfortunately are lucky and famous as Dolly), and the results will be translated to humans. That’s why my topic is called translational medicine: transfer the research and results that scientists get from animal research to humans.

I would say that everyday of my job is a challenge. It is a challenge because regarding to experimental work, it is all about planning. And if things go as you planned, that is a great success. My work starts at 8.30 in the morning and usually ends about 6 pm. It is always a long day at my Institute, the Roslin Institute. There  is always plenty to do, and on this side I would consider myself lucky, because there are really no chance to get bored. I usually start my day by checking e-mails, buying consumables and reagents by contacting representatives etc. Then I spent almost all the rest of the day in the lab, where I work for my project and making experiments, that is supposed to be the most exciting side of my job. And it really does. But as I was saying before, research is all about planning. And you have to be very careful on this step: the better you plan everything the more likely you will get what do you want. In few words, my job is : stay focused! (everyday).