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Prof. Gabriele Cruciani – scientific director

Gabriele Cruciani is full professor of Organic Chemistry since 2005 at the Chemistry Department of the University of Perugia (Italy) and scientific director at Molecular Horizon srl. He is also the scientific director of the Human Cytochrome Consortium Initiative, a Consortium of eight pharmaceutical companies which cooperate in studying the problems on human metabolism of drugs, and a member of the following Editorial Boards: Journal of Computer Aided Molecular Design, QSAR and Combinatorial Sciences, and Drug Discovery Today.

His scientific activity is documented by over 130 papers, all published on international journals, and by the book “Molecular Interaction Fields” (Wyley-VCH Editor).

Thanks to the outstanding results of his research activity, he has received the “Hansch Award” during the Gordon Conference of the QSAR and Modeling Society in Tilton (USA) in 2001 for his researches on QSAR and computer chemistry, the Research award from the Organic Division of the Italian Chemical Society in 2005, and the “Novartis Lectureship Award” in 2009 at Basel and Boston.

Dr. Sara Tortorella – R&D chemometrics, MALDI-IMS and LCMS lipidomics

Sara Tortorella graduated in Chemistry from the University of Perugia (Italy), and in 2017 she received her PhD in Biotechnology in Cheminformatics and Molecular Modeling.

During her studies, she joined excellent and top-world research groups at Northwestern University (Chicago, US), University of York (York, UK), Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (Barcelona, ES), and GlaxoSmithKline (Philadelphia, US). Her expertise is the use of chemometric and cheminformatic for material and drug design, molecular modeling, MS and MS imaging lipidomics data analysis, software design.

In addition to her research activity, she is the coordinator of the "Dissemination of Chemical Culture” group of the Italian Chemical Society, young member of the Italian Metabolomics Network board, and Science Communication Manager of EpiLipidNet COST action CA19105.

Giulia Sorbi – R&D software design and development

Giulia Sorbi graduated in Computer Science at the University of Perugia (Italy) in 2017 with a thesis entitled “Data analysis of Twitter accounts for fake followers detection”. Interested in data mining and analysis, her thesis work involved the application of supervised and semi-supervised machine learning techniques. Her main expertise is in software development with different programming languages, like C, C++, Java, and Python. Her current focus lies in designing and developing software using the cross-platform framework Qt.

Dr. Marta Piroddi - R&D experimental lipidomics, bioinformatics

Marta Piroddi graduated in Biological Sciences at University of Urbino (Italy) and in 2007 she obtained her PhD degree in Biochemical Sciences at University of Perugia (Italy). From 2007 to 2017 she gained post-doc positions at the School of Pharmacy, Dept. of Pharmaceutical Sciences University of Perugia and in 2014 she obtained the National Abilitation (Italian Ministry of University and Research) as Associated professor of General Biochemistry and Clinical Biochemistry. Her scientific and research activity has covered different areas of biochemistry, cell biology, toxicology and nutrition as documented by more than 40 publications on peer-reviewed journals, books and conference proceedings (h-index: 23). Main topics of projects were: free radical derived post-translational modification of proteins relevant to food chemistry and medicine (mainly associated to inflammation), metabolism and therapeutic applications of fat-soluble vitamins, mainly vitamin E and K, in health and disease.

Dr. Lydia Siragusa – R&D chemometrics, bioinformatics

Lydia Siragusa obtained her PhD degree in Organic Chemistry on 2013 at University of Perugia (Italy), under the supervision of Prof. Gabriele Cruciani. During the PhD her study was focused on the development of the GRID MIFs-based (Molecular Interaction Fields) methods applied to protein-protein comparison and the subsequent development of the BioGPS software for comparing protein active sites. During her PhD, she spent 10 months at the Institute for Research for Biomedicine (IRB, Barcelona, Spain), under the supervision of Patrick Aloy in the Structural Bioinformatic and Network Biology laboratory. Her job focuses on the development and the applications of methodologies for characterizing and comparing protein binding sites based on the GRID MIFs. Such methods are applied for rationalizing drug side-effects, ligand selectivity, catalysis specificity, de novo drug discovery, chemical food safety and polypharmacology through a 3D structural point of view.

Dr. Aurora Valeri – R&D experimental lipidomics, toxicity

Aurora Valeri graduated in Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Technologies at University of Siena (Italy) and in 2008 she received her PhD in Molecular and Cellular Physiology, Pharmacology and Toxicology, under the supervision of Dr. Federica Pessina. During her PhD she spent 7 months at the Department of Pharmacology of the University of Oxford (UK), under the supervision of Prof. Keith Brain, working on calcium imaging contractions studies. From 2008 to 2011 Aurora gained post-doc positions respectively at University of Turin, with Prof. Giampiero Muccioli, and at the University of Siena with Prof. Massimo Valoti; she also followed a challenging pilot project on ATP detection by microelectrodes at the College of Medical and Dental Sciences of the University of Birmingham (UK) with Prof. Keith Brain. From 2013 to 2017 she did post-doctoral works at the University of Perugia working in Perugia in the MIUR “FIRB-Futuro in Ricerca 2010” Program Project RBFR10X5OO under the supervision of Dr. Laura Goracci. Aurora’s main areas of interest are: toxicology (especially metabolomics, by use of mass spectrometry), physiology and cellular biology.

Simone Moretti – LCMS, analytical techniques

Simone Moretti obtained his master degree in Organic Chemistry on 2018 at University of Perugia (Italy), under the supervision of Prof. David Michele Cappelletti with a thesis entitled “Determination of aminoglycosides in milk samples by paper spray ionization coupled to high resolution mass spectrometry”. During the work of thesis his study was focused on the development of new analytical approach for the determination of vet drug residues by emerging techniques such as Paper Spray Ionization coupled to high resolution mass spectrometry. He worked in E.RI.C.A. laboratory focused in the environmental field and then in Aboca Spa. Currently he’s collaborating with the Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale dell’Umbria e delle Marche (R&D dep.), a national official lab for the analysis of food by animal origin. His skills are related to the sample preparation and instrumental analysis mainly based on the mass spectrometry technique (low and high resolution).

Francesco Dottorini - Legal counsel