MICHELA CHIUMENTI

In 2007, I got my bachelor degree in “Agricultural Science and Technology” at University of Bari Aldo Moro, the same place where I earned, in 2010, the master degree in “Plant Medicine” curriculum “Phytopathological Science and Technology”, both of them, full marks with honors.
During my Ph.D. in “Crop Protection”, from 2011 to 2013, I worked on a thesis about “Next generation sequencing for characterization and diagnosis of viruses and viroids of woody plants”. In this thesis project, I had the chance to study and characterize plant diseases with unknown aetiology using NGS techniques, from library preparation until the bioinformatics analysis and downstream wet lab validations. I also spent six months abroad at the UEA (Norfolk, UK), where I improved my bioinformatics skills about sRNA analysis and synthesized a set of libraries using HD protocol. From 2014 until now I am working, with temporary contracts, as post-doc at CNR-IPSP, where I have been studying plant-pathogen interactions, diagnosis, validations and genome reconstruction using NGS technologies and bioinformatics approaches, also producing many publications in the field.

Activity in POnTE: My contribution in POnTE project was about the reconstruction of draft genomes of Xylella strains and plant-pathogen interaction through transcriptome profiling of two different olive cultivars infected with XF CoDiRO strain.