Profile

My name is Mattia and I am a PhD student at EMBL Heidelberg. Here I joined the Furlong lab where I am studying the relationship between genetic variation and transcription to better understand gene regulation.

I grew up in a small village at the foot of the Alps in Piedmont. I then moved to Torino to study Molecular Biotechnology. During my university years I worked on mammalian gene expression evolution and gene expression variation in humans at the Molecular Biotechnology Center. I also spent four months at the Université Paris-Sud during an Erasmus internship.

Diary

EMBL School Ambassador visit to a school in Pinerolo (Italy) in March 2016

In March 2016 I visited my former high school to introduce the final year students to my research. The main goal was to show them that scientists are normal people who have made their passion their job and that to achieve this goal is not impossible. I made a first contact with my former science teacher and in a few days all the other teachers in the high school asked me to talk to their students as well. I then had the chance to organize four meetings with more than 200 students in total. I liked to talk to small groups of student in an informal way and I think this enhanced interactions between them and me.

The four encounters were divided into one hour of presentation and one hour of discussion. During my presentation I tried to fill the gap between the genetics studied in high school and the hot research topics in nowadays genetics. I started from Mendel’s laws and I continued with an introduction to complex traits. I then moved to the Human Genome Project and 1000 Genomes and ended with the promises and the challenges of personalized medicine.

During the discussion the students showed interest in the presentation topics and they were curious about my PhD project. They also had the chance to ask many questions about the University life and how to choose the right path. They asked me about my experience and some of them were already thinking of studying scientific subjects.

This two days experience improved my communication skills and engaged me in communicating science to lay people. It helped me to take a step back and to understand the essential parts of my project and to see it in the broad scientific context. I am glad that I had this opportunity and I am looking forward to my next visit! Many thanks to the ELLS team.