During my Bachelor of Biotechnology from the University of Padova, I developed a strong interest in virology and genetics that led me to pursue a Master of Medical Biotechnologies. My thesis revolved around third-generation lentiviral vectors to deliver CRISPR/Cas9 for HIV-1 proviral DNA targeting, an experience that deepened my understanding of genetics and retroviruses.

I am now a PhD student in Robert Kofler's lab at the Institute of Population Genetics, University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, where I research the evolutionary dynamics of transposable elements (TEs). My work combines in vivo experiments withDrosophila erecta and Drosophila melanogaster and computational simulations to investigate how TEs invade and spread through populations, and how they interact with host defense pathways such as piRNAs.

My research revealed a number of recent TE invasions in the melanogaster species complex during the last decades. We demonstrated that horizontal transfer events, potentially caused by range expansions mediated by humans, could trigger cascades of TE invasions in numerous species, including geographically isolated island endemics. In another project, we reconstructed a detailed two-centuries timeline of TE invasions in D. melanogaster, showing that at least twelve TE families have colonized the genome over this time. These results underscore the major contribution of TEs to genome evolution over surprisingly short evolutionary timescales.