My history

Raised in the Antilles, educated in Europe and trained as a researcher around the world to better understand the impact of plant-soil interactions on the dynamics and functioning of terrestrial ecosystems. During my Ph.D., I have been interested in better understanding the impact of the symbiotic association between plants and fungi on the distribution, dynamics and functioning of forests and especially maple forests in Québec. Now, I am also focusing on the impacts and interactions of the entire soil biota, including plants, during ecosytem development. To explore the ecological linkages, I combine a wide variety of approaches ranging from field surveys and experiments to metabarcoding, bioinformatics and modelling. I am constantly looking for new methods and I also try to share them to the best of my knowledge. Before that, I had the privilege of studying in several universities in Europe and participated in different research projects around the world. When I was not doing research, I taught biology, geology and sustainable development to teenagers.

Affiliations

  • Dipartimento di Scienze e Politiche Ambientali, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italia
  • Centre sur la Biodiversité, Institut de Recherche en Biologie Végétale (link)
  • Centre for Forest Research (link)
  • Quebec Centre for Biodiversity Science (link)

Centre sur la biodiversité, Montréal

Education

  • 2016-2020: Ph.D. in ecology, Institut de recherche en biologie végétale, département de sciences biologiques, Université de Montréal, Canada
    Supervisors : Etienne Laliberté and Mark Vellend
    Title: Mycorrhizal dominance as a local determinant of forest ecological processes (link to my thesis)

  • 2010-2012: M.Sc. in biodiversity conservation, Université de Montpellier II, France and the Aegean University, Greece

  • 2007-2010: B.Sc. in ecology, Université de Toulouse III, France

Beautiful Μυτιλήνη (Mytilene), Greece

Outstanding Awards

  • Nominated for the Governor General’s academic gold medal (2022)
  • Dean’s Honor List & Ph.D. with an exceptional mention (2021, link)
  • Hydro-Québec excellence fellow, Université de Montréal, Canada (2019-2020)
  • Marie-Victorin excellence fellow, Institut de recherche en biologie végétale, Canada (2018-2019, link)
  • Student success fellow, Faculté des études supérieures et postdoctorales, Université de Montréal, Canada (2017-2018, link)
  • Fellow of the Institut de l’engagement (2015, link)

Service

  • Peer Review: New Phytologist (New Phytologist Foundation), PNAS (National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America), Nature Communications (Nature Publishing), Ecological Monographs (Ecological Society of America), Plant and Soil (Royal Netherlands Society of Agricultural Science) and Botany (Canadian Science Publishing) Publons
  • R coordinator for the QCBS (2019-2020, Link)
  • Organizing committee of the Microbial Ecology Seminar Series of the QCBS (2018-2019, Link)
  • President of the graduate biology student association, Université de Montréal (2018-2019, Link)
  • Member of the seminar committee of the IRBV (2016-2018, Link)
  • Student representative for the QCBS (2017-2018, Link)
  • Organizer of the BIOME workshop, a 3-days workshop on BIO-infomratics for MEtabarcoding (2018, Link)
  • Online multilingual (french-english-spanish) tutorials Link
  • Animator of the “Microbes club”, discussion group composed of students, postdocs and profs from different universities in Montréal Link

BIOME workshop participants, Laurentides