Welcome to Debora and Eugenio!

A warm welcome to Debora and Eugenio, who have recently joined TIGEM. 
We hope you both have had a warm welcome and enjoy your time with us!

Dr Eugenio Del Prete has recently arrived as a new Bioinformatics Core team member. Eugenio Del Prete graduated in Telecommunication Engineering in 2012 at the University of Rome 'Sapienza', in collaboration with the Regina Elena Institute of Rome (Italy). His thesis was based on statistical and data analysis of the miRNA promoter concerning the transcription factor NF-Y. From 2013 to 2015, he had a research fellowship at the Institute of Food Sciences (National Research Council) in Avellino (Italy), within the INTEROMICS Flagship Project, working principally on protein structural features classification, mass spectrometry data analysis, molecular docking, protein sequence alignment, and phylogenetic tree analysis. He got a Ph.D. in Applied Biology in 2019 at the University of Basilicata (Potenza, Italy), in collaboration with his previous institute and the Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge (UK).
His doctoral work focussed on celiac disease and its comorbidities, making use of microarray data integration and analysis.  From 2019 to 2021, he had a research fellowship at the Institute of Applied Mathematics (National Research Council) in Naples (Italy), within the OT4CLIMA and ADVISE projects, working primarily on omics data analysis, and the development of web tools for proteomic data analysis (MALDI-TOF mass spectra) and metabolomics data (lipidomics). He is now a member of the Bioinformatics Core at TIGEM and will work alongside Diego di Bernardo as biostatistician and data analyst.

Dr Debora Stelitano has recently arrived, joining the Molecular Determinants of Viral Pathogenesis Lab at TIGEM. She graduated in Biology in 2012 from the University of Messina, then she moved in Trieste where she obtained her PhD in Molecular Biomedicine in 2017. After her PhD, she moved to New York for a post-doc at the Pediatrics Department in the Infectious Diseases division at Columbia University. There her work was mainly focused on the study of the molecular mechanism of measles infection and its spread in the brain. As an Adjunct Research Scientist at Columbia University and Researcher at University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli”, she was focused on the development of high-throughput platforms to screen neutralizing antibodies and antiviral molecules for use against SARS-CoV-2. 
In the Cortese group at TIGEM, she will combine structural and functional approaches to investigate the molecular mechanisms driving cellular organelle remodeling during the SARS-CoV-2 infection. In particular, she will focus on the host and viral factors that are required to build viral replication organelles, the specialized virus-induced structures in which viral genome replication occurs. These studies will provide novel insights not only on SARS-CoV-2 replication but will also allow us to understand how pre-existing conditions, such as genetic diseases, can affect viral infection, spread and, ultimately disease severity.