Short bio

Andrea is a research associate working in the field of forensic taphonomy. His research focuses on the application of multiple omics techniques (metabolomics, lipidomics and proteomics) to understand diagenetic changes in bone biomolecules. He is also interested in the mechanisms underlying bone ageing and fracture. He applies a combination of mechanical and spectroscopic techniques to evaluate bone matrix quality. For this purpose, he has applied a multidisciplinary approach that involves, mechanical analysis, mass spectrometry-based proteomics and metabolomics, histomorphometry (µCT and hard tissue histology) and biophysical analysis (spectroscopic methods and thermal analysis).

Currently, he is investigating post-mortem bone biomolecules degradation for the Future Leader Fellowship-funded ForensOMICS project. He is responsible for the development and testing of a novel protocol for the extraction and analysis of bone metabolites and lipids via GC- and LC-MS. He is also working on machine learning techniques to integrate different omics outputs (metabolomics, proteomics and lipidomics) for post-mortem interval estimation. His work has been published un highly ranked peer reviewed journal and presented  in the major forensic science international conferences.