The lab as of July 2024.

Nicola Segata

Nicola Segata

Principal Investigator

CV

Nicola Segata, Ph.D., is a Full Professor and Principal Investigator at the CIBIO Department of the University of Trento (Italy) and Principal Investigator at the European Institute of Oncology in Milan (Italy). In 2013, he founded the laboratory that has been bringing together computational scientists, experimental biologists, statisticians, and clinicians to study the diversity of the human microbiome and its role in human diseases.

Postdoctoral Fellows

Giacomo Antonello

Giacomo Antonello

Postdoc data analyst

 

After his PhD study supervised by Nicola Segata and Christian Fuchsberger from Eurac Research, Giacomo joined the lab in October 2024 to study the relationship between the microbiome and Parkinson's disease, within the project funded by the Michael J Fox Foundation ASAP network.

Joint with: Levi Waldron's lab - the CUNY School of Public Health in New York City

Gloria Fackelmann

Gloria Fackelmann

Postdoctoral fellow

 

Gloria joined the lab in January 2023 as a postdoctoral researcher to study the human gut microbiome in relation to diet and disease. She obtained her PhD in Biology at Ulm University, Germany, where her work focused on anthropogenic disturbances to wildlife gut microbiomes. Her research interests lie in combining computational metagenomics with microbial and statistical ecology to elucidate the unknowns of the gut microbiome.

Vitor Heidrich

Vitor Heidrich

Postdoctoral fellow

 

Vitor joined the lab in June 2023 as a postdoctoral fellow. His research interests include the role of oral bacteria in oral diseases and the interaction between food and human microbiomes.

Liviana Ricci

Liviana Ricci

Postdoctoral fellow

 

Liviana joined the lab in January 2021, to study human uncharacterized bacterial species and mechanisms of horizontal transmission of non-pathogenic bacteria. She completed her PhD at the Rowett Institute (Aberdeen, UK) where she focused on in vitro characterization of single microbial species, and of microbe-microbe and microbe-host interactions. She is interested in bacterial metabolic functions and their participation to host health and defense from infections.

sabry

Mohamed S. Sarhan

Postdoctoral fellow

 

Sabry joined the lab in November 2022 as a postdoctoral fellow. He is working with Christian Fuchsberger from Eurac Research to analyze the microbiome and metabolomics data of the Cooperative Health Research In South Tyrol (CHRIS) study in relation to type 2 diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).

Svetlana Ugarcina Perovic

Svetlana U. Perovic

Postdoctoral fellow

 

Svetlana joined the lab in November 2023 after her wet-lab and dry-lab postdoc experience at University of Glasgow (UK), University of Porto (Portugal) and Fudan University (China). Svetlana is a strong supporter of open science and open source initiatives.

Gianmarco Piccinno

Gianmarco Piccinno

Postdoctoral fellow

 

Gianmarco joined the lab in 2019 and completed his PhD in Biomolecular Sciences (University of Trento) in 2024. He works on cancer microbiome characterization and microbial associations with cancer progression and therapy outcomes. His expertise includes large-scale microbiome analysis, statistical approaches and machine learning in microbiome association studies.

Research Scientists

Francesco Asnicar

Francesco Asnicar

Group Scientist

@ CIBIO

Francesco is a tenure-track researcher at the CIBIO Department of the University of Trento (Italy), and his research focuses on developing computational analysis tools for metagenomic data. He joined the lab in March 2014 for his PhD and till April 2024 worked as a postdoctoral fellow. His expertise lies in phylogenomics reconstruction and applying machine learning methods to uncover novel links between the human gut microbiome, diet, and cardiometabolic health from large-scale microbiome datasets.

Sabrina Tamburini

Sabrina

Group Scientist

@ IEO

Tamburini

Asst. Prof.

@ CaFoscari

Sabrina is an Assistant Professor (w tenure track) in Microbiology in the Department of Molecular Sciences and Nanosystems at Ca’ Foscari University Venice and a Group Scientist in the Department of Experimental Oncology at IEO (European Institute of Oncology in Milan, Italy). In IEO she is leading a project about gut microbiome in healthy aging and she is interested in discovery new gut commensals and understanding the role of gut microbiome in: modulating cancer risk, preventing cancer development and responding to cancer treatment especially for immunotherapy approaches. In Venice she is studying the chemical and physical factors that drive the assembly of gut community and the interaction among the bacterial species.

Research Assistants

Federica Armanini

Federica Armanini

Research Assistant

 

Federica is a biologist working as a wet lab technician, she joined the lab in March 2015. Currently she is processing the samples from different projects, preparing them for sequencing.

Federica Pinto

Federica Pinto

Scientific Project Manager

CV

After her PhD and postdoctoral experience in microbiology, Federica, as a a scientific project coordinator, is currently supporting the research of the team in many aspects: from proposal writing, projects management, report writing, PhDs and postDocs assistance, to recruiting and administrative and financial aspects.

Research Fellows

Kaelyn Long

Kaelyn Long

Research fellow

Kaelyn joined the lab in June 2024 as a Bioinformatician/Curator with the Michael J Fox Foundation ASAP network. She obtained her Master's degree in Bioinformatics at Northeastern University and is currently investigating the roles of the microbiome in Parkinson's disease through data harmonization, curation, and meta-analysis.

Joint with: Levi Waldron's lab - the CUNY School of Public Health in New York City

PhD Students

Matteo Ciciani

Matteo Ciciani

PhD Student

 

Matteo joined the lab in April 2021. He obtained his Master's degree in Quantitative and Computational Biology at University of Trento. His main research interest is the bioinformatic analysis of CRISPR/Cas systems in the human microbiome.

Joint with: Laboratory of Molecular Virology - University of Trento (PI: Annna Cereseto)

Linda Cova

Linda Cova

PhD student

 

Linda joined the lab in 2023 as a student of the Master in Quantitative and Computational Biology. She is currently working on functional analysis of the gut microbiome and metagenomic profiling strategies for long-read sequencing data.

Hrituraj Dey

Hrituraj Dey

SEMM PhD Student

 

Hrituraj has a background in zoology and bioinformatics. He joined the lab in February 2024 after obtaining a Master's degree in Bioinformatics from India. His study is focused on the metagenomic analysis of the gut microbiome and how its shape is affected during a person-to-person microbiome transmission.

Davide Golzato

Davide Golzato

PhD Student

 

Davide has a background in biotechnology and quantitative and computational biology. He began his PhD in 2021, with a strong interest in metagenomics, specifically in metagenomic assembly and functional and phylogenetic analysis of undercharacterized microbial species.

Amin Haghparast

Amin Haghparast

PhD Student

 

Amin joined the lab in November 2023 as an industrial PhD student within a cooperation program with Prebiomics S.r.l. His major interests are development and implementation of a semi-automated human microbiome analysis pipeline for the provision of third party services.

Roberta Marconi

Roberta Marconi

PhD Student

 

Roberta joined the lab in August 2023. She holds a MSc in Molecular and Cellular Biotechnology from the University of Trento. Her thesis delved into the intriguing interplay between the gut microbiome and the regulation of anticancer immune responses. Roberta explores the microbial potential of fermented foods and their relationship with the human gut microbiome.

Claudia Mengoni

Claudia Mengoni

PhD Student

 

Claudia joined the lab in 2023. She obtained her Master's degree in Bioinformatics at Ghent University. Her work is focused on computational tools for metagenomic analyses.

Amir NabiNejad

Amir NabiNejad

SEMM PhD Student

@ IEO, Milan

Amir joined the lab in October 2021. He focused on the metabolic interplay between the gut microbiome and immune system in colorectal cancer patients during his Master’s degree in Molecular Biology of the Cell (UniMi-IEO) and his following fellowship. As a PhD student, he tries to unravel links between the human microbiome and healthy aging as well as cancer.

Elisa Piperni

Elisa Piperni

SEMM PhD Student

@ IEO, Milan

Elisa joined the lab in 2021 after obtaining her Master's degree in Quantitative and Computational Biology. She is currently studying relations between healthy aging, cancer, and the human microbiome.

Michal Punčochář

Michal Punčochář

PhD Student

 

Michal joined the lab in September 2020. He's in charge of developing an improved version of StrainPhlAn and maintaining a huge database of MAGs. He's applying strain tracking methods on various datasets, such as fecal microbiota transplant to study the dynamics of microbial engraftment or babies in a daycare to understand the dynamics of early life microbiota.

Giulio Villa

Giulio Villa

PhD Student

 

Giulio joined the lab in December 2024 as an industrial PhD student within a cooperation program with PreBiomics. He is a dentist, focused on oral microbiome and peri-implant diseases, as well as a coordinator of the EIC transition program - Beta Treat.

Predoctoral fellows

Paolo Marchi

Paolo Marchi

Predoctoral fellow

Paolo joined the lab in December 2024 as a pre-doctoral research fellow. He is a bioinformatician passionate about unraveling the complexities of life through data and code. For more information, check out his LinkedIn profile

External Lab Affiliates

Serena Manara

Serena Manara

External Lab Affiliate

 

Serena joined the lab in November 2014, where she pursued her PhD in 2019 focusing on host-microbiome interactions, including human and non-human hosts, and the vertical transmission of microbiome members from mothers to infants. In 2020, she started building the Microbiome Virtual International Forum (MVIF) with Nicola Segata and Levi Waldron, whose inaugural event took place in September 2021. Serena now serves as the main manager of MVIF and works as a Scientific Project Manager at PreBiomics, focusing on the oral microbiome.

Mireia Valles-Colomer

Mireia Valles-Colomer

External Lab Affiliate

 

Mireia joined the lab in 2019. She pursued her PhD on the role of the gut microbiome in mental health at the Raes Lab (VIB-KU Leuven, Belgium), and as a postdoctoral fellow at the Segata Lab she studied human microbiome transmission by large scale strain-level metagenomic profiling. From September 2023 she also leads the Microbiome Research Group at UPF (Barcelona, Spain).

Current visitors

Farnaz Fazaeli

Fellowship student

IEO

Zhuobing Peng

Visiting PhD Student

University of Copenhagen (Denmark)

Former visitors

Robert Bücking

Visiting PhD Student

Forslund lab (Germany)

Ícaro Maia Santos de Castro

Visiting PhD Student

University of São Paulo (Brazil)

Samuel Piquer Esteban

Visiting PreDoc student

Institute for Integrative Systems Biology (Spain)

Sergio Andreu Sánchez

Visiting PhD Student

University Medical Center Groningen (The Netherlands)

Milka Malesevic

Visiting PostDoc

University of Belgrade (Serbia)

Nicole Treichel

Visiting PostDoc

Uniklinik RWTH Aachen (Germany)

Maria Camila Alvarez Silva

Visiting PhD student

Arumugam lab, University of Copenhagen (Denmark)

Thomas Yssing Michaelsen

Visiting PhD student

Albertsen lab, Aalborg University (Denmark)

Malo Le Boulch

Visiting PhD student

GenPhySE, INRA (France)

Marisa Metzger

Visiting student

University Heidelberg (Germany)

Galo Adrián Serrano

Visiting PhD student

Iñaki Comas Lab (Spain)

Tom van Wijk

Visiting Scientist

Eelco Franz Lab, RIVM (Utrecht)

Kristen Meyer

Visiting Student

Aagaard Lab, BCM (US)

Bruno Fosso

Visiting PostDoc

IBIOM - CNR Bari (Italy)

Vedrana Vidulin

Visiting Researcher

Jozef Stefan Institute (Slovenia)

Atara Uzan

Visiting PhD Student

Koren Lab, Bar Ilan University (Israel)

Lucas Schiffer

Visiting PhD Student

Waldron Lab, CUNY (US)

Daniela Dolce

Visiting Scientist

Meyer Hospital (Italy)

Yadira Galeano

Visiting PhD Student

Universidad de Antioquia (Colombia)

Urša Bole

Visiting Bachelor Student

Sander Wuyts

Visiting PhD Student

University of Antwerp (Belgium)

Valerio Iebba

Postdoctoral research visit

Sapienza University of Rome (Italy)

Sokhna Gueye

Postdoctoral research visit

 

Former Group Members

Simone Anzà

Postdoctoral researcher

Now at Mitreva Lab

Paolo Manghi

Postdoctoral researcher

Now at FEM

Katarina Mladenovic

Computational research assistant

Andrea Silverj

PhD student

Now at the University of Bologna

Aitor Blanco-Míguez

Postdoctoral researcher

Now at PreBiomics

Marta Selma-Royo

Postdoctoral researcher

Niccolò Carlino

PhD Student

Leonard Dubois

Postdoctoral researcher

Now at Sorbonne Université, Paris

Alex Berretta

Master Student

Andrea Zen

Master Student

Omkar Mahendra Khandpekar

Master Student

Charlotte Servais

Pre-doc Student

Alberto Arrè

QCB Master Student

Vittoria Ossanna

DISI Bachelor Student

Andrew Thomas

Postdoctoral fellow

Now at Microbiotica, UK

Nikolai Karcher

PhD Student

Now at EMBL Heidelberg

Kun D. Huang

PhD Student

Now at Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research

Francesco Beghini

PhD Student

Now at Human Nature Lab at Yale University

Fabio Cumbo

Postdoctoral Fellow

Now at Genomic Medicine Institute, Cleveland

Giulia Masetti

Postdoctoral Fellow

Moreno Zolfo

Postdoctoral Fellow

Now at Tokyo Institute of Technology

Davide Bazzani

QCB Master Student

Now at PreBiomics

Adrian Tett

Postdoctoral Fellow

Now at University of Vienna

Eleonora Nigro

Predoctoral Fellow

Now at University of Copenhagen

Germana Baldi

QCB Master Student

 

Chiara Mazzoni

QCB Master Student

 

Claudia Mengoni

DISI Bachelor Student

 

Paolo Ghensi

PhD Student

Now at PreBiomics

Edoardo Pasolli

Postdoctoral Fellow

Now at University of Naples

Mattia Bolzan

Research Assistant

Now at PreBiomics

Pamela Ferretti

Master Student

Now PhD Student at EMBL

Tin Duy Truong

Postdoctoral Fellow

Now in Industry

Matthias Scholz

Postdoctoral Fellow

Now at Edmund Mach Foundation

Giulia Corsi

DISI Master Student

 

Federico Taverna

DISI Master Student

 

Luca Erculiani

DISI Master Student

 

Thomas Tolio

DISI Master Student

 

Roman Stolyarov

Bachelor Student

Now at MIT

Manuel Micheloni

High School Student

Now at University of Trento

Temesgen Dadi

Master Student

Now at the Max Planck Institute