Team

Thomas Vaccari – Thomas joined the Unimi faculty in 2017 as an Associate Professor, after 7 years as a junior group leader at IFOM. After graduating in Milan, he completed his doctoral work with Anne Ephrussi at the EMBL in Germany (2003) and later worked as a Postdoc at UC Berkeley in the lab of David Bilder (2004-2009). Research in Thomas’ lab is, or has been, supported by the Italian ministry of research (MUR), Telethon Italia, the European community, AIRC (Associazione Italiana Ricerca sul Cancro), WCR (Worldwide Cancer Research), the University of Milan and Fondazione Cariplo. Thomas is part of the board of the European Drosophila Society (EDS) and of the EMBL alumni association, and is a founding member of the JEDI (Junior European Drosophila Investigators) network. He serves as an editor for the journals Autophagy, Scientific reports, Cells and Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology. See his track record of publications on Google Scholar – PubMed and his ORCID profile

Francesco Lavezzari – Francesco is the master of all things molecular biology and supports most of Drosophila activities in the lab. He is interested in characterizing new mutants in genes important for glycosylation in flies and in elucidating the activity of Snap29 at the Golgi apparatus. His project is supported by the Italian Ministry of research (PRIN2020).

Alyssa Paganoni – Alyssa just joined after a PhD in the Cariboni lab (DISFEB, Unimi). She will work on the characterization of the Golgi functions of Snap29 using cells in culture and Drosophila. Her project is supported by the Italian Ministry of research (PRIN2020). See her publications in Pubmed

Paulien H. Smeele – Paulien has graduated at the Imperial College of London and has been an intern in the lab of Marc Dionne. She is now investigating the involvement of Snap29 in trafficking and neurodegeneration as part of the ITN network SAND. See her publication in Pubmed

Simona Totaro – Simona is developing a fly model of medulloblastoma in collaboration with the group of Valentina Massa (unimi).

Giuliana Cesare – Giuliana trained for her master at the University of Lubeck in the group of Christine Klein. She is now studying the role of a new E3 ubiquitin ligase in autophagy in the context of mTOR and Mitf signaling. See her publications in Pubmed

Gaia Consonni – Gaia performed her master thesis in the lab under the supervision of Antonio Galeone and now for her PhD she is investigating the functionality of the Drosophila gut in fly models of rare disease in collaboration with the group of Elisa Borghi (unimi). See her publications in Pubmed

Giulia Vitale – Giulia attended the lab for her master thesis and now for as a PhD candidate she is investigating the functionality of the Drosophila gut in fly models of intestinal pseudo-obstruction.

Shiyao Ma – Shiyao is building vectors to validate putative Drosophila Hecw interactors in collaboration with the group of Simona Polo (IFOM).

Viola Prestini – Viola will explore the metabolism of different populations of neurons in collaboration with the Erika Donà (Institute of Neuroscience, CNR, Milan).

Antonio Galeone – Antonio obtained his PhD at IIT and was a Postdoc at Baylor College of Medicine with Hamed Jafar-Nejad and subsequently in our lab as a Marie Curie Postdoctoral fellow. He is now a researcher at CNR-Nanotech in Lecce. We are still collaborating with a number of shared projects in the field of glycosylation, so he frequently visits our lab. He’s the proud new father of vaccarilabbaby#2! See his publications on PubMed

Erika Donà – Erika earned her PhD at EMBL, Heidelberg in the group of Darren Gilmour and has recently finished her Postdoc with Greg Jefferies at LMB, Cambridge. She is now a researcher at CNR-Insititute of Neuroscience in Milan. We are collaborating on the elucidation of biological significance of single cell transcriptomics data from developing fly neurons. See her publications on Pubmed