Maria Aurelia Ricci

My scientific career started as Undergraduate Student at The Telethon Institute of Genetics and Medicine (TIGEM), in Naples, Italy, where during three years I have been involved in different projects in collaboration between the Synthetic and System Biology group of Dr. Diego Di Bernardo and the Yeast Cellular biology group of Dr. Maria Pia Cosma. In 2010 I earned a Master Degree in Medical Biotechnology at the ´University Federico II´, in Naples, and I moved to Barcelona for my PhD studies at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), where Pia Cosma was establishing her new ´Reprogramming and Regeneration` group (http://piacosmalab.com/).

My PhD research has been focused on the characterization of the nuclear architecture and the chromatin structure at single cell level of pluripotent and differentiated cells, by using a new breakthrough microscopy technique that allow to overcome the diffraction limit of the light reaching a spatial resolution of ~ 20nm. Working in collaboration with Dr. Melike Lakadamyali, an expert in the field of super-resolution microscopy, we were able to visualize and count nucleosomes along the chromatin fibers of many cell types and to show that changes in the assembly of nucleosomes resemble changes in cellular phenotype when passing from pluripotent to somatic state and vice-versa.

In 2015 I obtained the PhD in Biomedicine at University Pompeu Fabra of Barcelona and I joined the group of Dr. Melike Lakadamyali, at the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO), as Postdoctoral Researcher. I´m continuing to study chromatin organization with super-resolution microscopy.