- Team Leader: Daniele Daffonchio -


Brief description of the organization:
The University of Milan is one of the major Italian universities and member of the LERU, League of European Research Universities. Partner 1 operates at the Faculty of Agriculture in the Department of Food Science and Microbiology (DiSTAM). It is the largest department of the University of Milan, founded in 1985, counting at present 54 professors and researchers, 32 technicians and 11 administrative employees. Since 2007 DiSTAM moved to new headquarters located in a new building conceived following modern work organisation concepts. DiSTAM was founded in 1985 in response to the increasing demand for scientific support and educational programs from the Italian industry in the sectors of environmental biotechnology and food production. The expertise covers many aspects related to applied environmental microbiology and biotechnology and food science. DiSTAM organizes PhD and Master training courses on Environmental Protection, Biological Control and Food Biotechnology, to implement education and research for environmental protection and safe, affordable and environmentally sustainable food that enhance human heath and quality of life.

Main tasks in the project:
UMIL will contribute to the following tasks: (i) Coordination and project management; (ii) Contacts with Scientific and Financial Officers and reporting to the European Commission; (iii) Establishing and maintaining the web site of the project and the related newsgroup; (iv) Organization and chairing of the project meetings and of the Steering Committee meetings; (v) Training of research members from the team of Partner 2; (vi) Organization of all the dissemination initiatives, including three scientific-technical workshops and the final conference.

Profiles of staff members:
Assoc. Prof. Daniele Daffonchio, the project coordinator, is responsible for the UMIL team, composed by 11 scientists. He worked for many years in the field of environmental microbial ecology and biotechnology and has published more than 75 research papers in international journals including primary multidisciplinary journals. He focuses on the study of microbial communities from different environments like deep sea hypersaline lakes, cold and hot deserts and insect vectors of human and plant diseases. He discovered new microbial assemblages, the mode they contribute to the system functioning and new microbes with high biotechnological potential. Prof. Daffonchio participated to several EC projects and coordinates a project for the genome sequencing of two extremophile bacteria from arid environments. The research capacity of the team is based on the exploitation of a fully equipped molecular microbial ecology platform, and on expertise in microbial genetics and physiology. Sara Borin (Assoc. Prof.), Annalisa Balloi (post-Doc fellow), Francesca Mapelli and Ramona Marasco (PhD students) have experience on complex bacterial communities and isolate characterization. Aurora Rizzi (technician) and Elena Crotti and Noura Raddadi (Post-Doc fellows) and Caterina Camerota and Giuseppe Merlino (PhD students) have experience in bacterial genetic manipulation and mutant construction. Daffonchio and the lab members extensively published in peer-reviewed journals including high impact journals such as Nature, Science, PNAS, Current Biology and others. Daffonchio authored chapters in several scientific international books and is currently member of the Editorial Board of the journals Annals of Microbiology, and International Journal of Microbiology.