Mr. Massimo Parodi is from Genova (Italy) where he got a Bachelor’s degree in Natural Science. He undertook a training period at the CRA-FSO in Sanremo under the supervision of Dr. Barbara Ruffoni that was aimed at gaining experience with in vitro culture and micropropagation. Moreover he attended a Horticultural Internship Programme at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London..

He has visited the Department of Plant Breeding and Biotechnology of the IUNG-PIB within the frame of the Proficiency project for a 3-month scientific exchange (2 September – 30 November 2012) with Dr. Anna Czubacka as his direct supervisor. In IUNG he was performing in vitro culture and micropropagation of tobacco and hop, DNA and RNA isolation from hop leaves, ELISA test, PCR and electrophoresis on tobacco leaves and flow cytometry on hop leaves.

Dr. Athanasios Balafoutis is an Agricultural Engineer from Agricultural University of Athens in Greece.
He obtained MSc in Agricultural and Environmental Engineering from Cranfield University, UK and a PhD in vegetable oil production and use as biofuel in diesel engines from AUA. He has 6-year research experience in national and international projects concerning biomass production and utilization in agriculture. He has 2 peer-reviewed journal papers, 10 international conference papers and 4 national conference papers.

He spent one month (June 2012) in the Department of Agrometeorology and Applied Informatics for the implementation of a model on sunflower oil production systems for biofuel use, combining LCA methodology on energy savings and avoided GHG emissions calculations with soil carbon stock differentiation in three sunflower production systems with four fertilization levels. Economic analysis of all systems was also executed, in order to run a MCDM tool to indicate the best sunflower oil production scenario. A research publication is under preparation based on the model completed.

Dr Leena Räsänen is a microbiologist from the University of Helsinki, Finland.

Her specific field of research is plant – microbe interaction and identification of bacteria, especially those of symbiotic rhizobia and other plant growth promoting bacteria.
On 17 January 2012 she came for one-year to the Department of Agronomical Microbiology. Her research subject is identification and evaluation of genetic diversity of collection of N2-fixing bacteria (e.g. Azotobacter) using molecular genetic techniques.

 Associate Professor Borys Skip comes from Yuriy Fedkovych National University, Chernivtsi, Ukraine.

He has visited the Department of Soil Science, Erosion and Land Protection for two-month scientific exchange (February-March 2012). His work in IUNG-PIB concerns the spatial analysis (mathematical modelling) of contaminants emission into soils from different kind of sources.