Profile

I’ve been living in Cambridge since November 2019, but before coming here I lived in Austria and in Italy, were I was born. I love to travel and visit new places, especially with my motorbike, but I also enjoy going back home when possible, in a small town in the north of Italy. When I’m at home, I enjoy reading books, cooking (especially baking cakes) and trying some artistic projects (I’m not so good at it, but I always try my best!). I could probably survive on pasta, which is my favourite food, but I never say no to pizza (is it clear that I’m Italian?). I relax taking long walks and doing videocalls, which I use to keep in touch with my parents and my friends since we live far away. My pronouns are she/her.

I have been working in the field of cancer research since I started doing research. At the moment, I study kidney cancer. Kidney cancer is a like a puzzle, with many many pieces. To make things more complicated, some of these pieces are missing at the moment. I am one of the people who tries to find the missing pieces and then put them together. By piecing together this puzzle, it will be possible to better understand kidney cancer and try to develop better treatments to help improve people’s health. In my work, I focus on studying one of the factors that cause kidney cancer. We know that this factor is important, but how does it work exactly and what other factors are connected to this one? This is the part of the puzzle I’m working on!

I wake up early (when it’s still dark outside!) and I get ready for a day of work. I walk to the laboratory and, first thing in the morning, I write my “to do list” for the day (if I haven’t done it the day before!). My work is different every day but it always includes lots of experiments. To discover more about cancer, I have to generate ideas about how things work and then test if my ideas are right: this is what experiments are for and help science progress. For example, I work a lot with cells from tumours. I grow them and I need to take care of them, almost daily! Once I finish an experiment, I spend time checking the results. Sometime experiments work and sometimes they don’t, that’s science! But I always have to repeat my experiments multiple times, to confirm my results. Another important part of my working day is sitting in front of the computer and reading, I have to read a lot. When people discover some of the missing pieces in kidney cancer, they write about it and by finding out their discoveries I can get new ideas. Some days are filled with experiments and I run around the lab without sitting for a moment (just for lunch, when possible) and some days require more sitting in front of the computer. And, really important, every day I interact with my colleagues and my supervisor. We talk about science and we discuss our results, and we worked together to help each other. This is an important part of my work! In general every day is different but what is sure is that in the afternoon I can walk home knowing that I’ve learned something new.