Hi everyone! I’m Marco, a third (and final) year PhD student from Politecnico di Milano (Italy), currently visiting at the Georgia Institute of Technology (more commonly known as GeorgiaTech), located in Atlanta (USA). I am also the Technical Training Coordinator of YWPIT Chapter.

My PhD project revolves around the microbiological quality of drinking water, focusing on what happens between the treatment plant and our homes and trying to come up with more informative ways to monitor distribution systems. In fact, even though usually drinking water is disinfected, that does not mean that it is sterile, and complex microbial communities reside in drinking water distribution systems.

Here in Atlanta my activities involve the study of the drinking water microbiome through metagenomic approaches. While I have done (and I will do) a bit of lab work to recover the DNA from the microorganisms present in drinking water samples, I spend most of my time analyzing the data in front of a PC, so unfortunately I have no cool pictures to show you.

If you want to know more, I’ll be more than happy to talk about all of this.

Take care!

Marco