Team
Marc F. Schetelig | Professor
Justus-Liebig-University Gießen, Germany
Marc F. Schetelig is a researcher in the field of molecular biocontrol and gene editing. He is interested in developing environmentally friendly methods to control invasive fruit pests such as Drosophila suzukii, Medfly, and Aedes aegypti. In this context, he is improving the sterile insect technique (SIT). His work also focuses on the risk assessment of transgenic insects, the development of molecular biology systems to stabilise transgenes, and the comparison of different technologies, including CRISPR-Cas gene editing.
Nikos Papadopoulos | Professor
University of Thessaly, Greece
Nikos T. Papadopoulos is a Professor of Applied Entomology and Director of the Laboratory of Entomology and Agricultural Zoology at the University of Thessaly. His lab is active in the field of life-history evolution, insect ecology, behavior, and management with a focus on fruit flies of the family Tephritidae. A significant portion of his recent research involves the management of fruit flies using environmentally friendly tactics such as the release of sterile insects.
Francesca Scolari | Researcher
Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy
Francesca Scolari is a biologist. Her research activity aims to understand the genomic, molecular, and physiological bases of insect reproductive biology relevant to agriculture and public health. Her work focuses on the study of reproduction, olfaction, and interactions with endosymbionts to develop new tools for environmentally-friendly pest control. For REACT, Francesca focuses on establishing a metabolomics pipeline to identify male-quality markers for improved fruit fly mass-rearing.
Marc De Meyer | Researcher
Royal Museum for Central Africa, Belgium
Marc De Meyer is an entomologist with a PhD in zoology. He joined the Royal Museum of Central Africa (RMCA) in Tervuren in Belgium in 1988 and heads the invertebrate unit. Also, he is deputy head of the Department of African Biology, coordinator of the Joint Experimental Molecular Unit (JEMU) and the BopCo Unit (Barcoding Facility of Tissues and Organisms of Policy Concern). His area of expertise is the taxonomy, systematics, and phylogeny of the bipterans with emphasis on specific African groups, including the tephritid fruit flies.
Yafit Cohen | Researcher
Agricultural Research Organisation, Israel
Yafit Cohen is a senior research scientist at the Institute of Agricultural Engineering at ARO since 2003. She is an adjunct faculty at the Faculty of Agriculture, Hebrew University, and teaches GIS with focus on precision agriculture. She possesses a BA and a PhD in geography from Bar-Ilan University. One of her scientific interest is remote-sensing for precision agriculture and spatio-temporal analysis of insect in agricultural environments like Medfly and Red-palm-weevil. She is leading long-term studies to improve fruit flies monitoring and control including the development of automatic traps and spatial decision support systems for Medfly control.
Kostas Mathiopoulos | Professor
University of Thessaly, Greece
Kostas Mathiopoulos is Professor of Molecular Biology and Director of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Genomics at the University of Thesally. Current research interests of his team include engineering biology and toehold switches, RNAi-based insecticides, the structure, function, and evolution of the Tephritid Y chromosome, genetic sexing strains, olfactory, gustatory, and reproduction systems, and the regulatory role of long non-coding RNAs.
George Tsiamis | Professor
University of Patras, Greece
Professor George Tsiamis holds a position in Environmental Microbiology at the Department of Sustainable Agriculture of the University of Patras. He attained his MSc in Plant Protection from the University of Reading, UK, and his PhD in Molecular Microbiology from the University of London, UK. His research focuses on: (a) the microbial diversity in extreme environments through -omic technologies and single cell genomics, (b) accessing the metabolic diversity of microorganisms through genome sequencing, (c) designing and developing new tools for the study of bacterial diversity, and (d) host-microbe interactions with an emphasis on symbiotic associations through genetic, molecular, cellular, biochemical and genomic approaches.
Cristina Borghesi | PhD Student
Justus-Liebig-University Gießen, Germany
Cristina Borghesi is a PhD student in the Department of Insect Biotechnology in Crop Protection and a member of the research team on the Mediterranean fruit fly pest. Her scientific interest is in the sustainable management of agricultural pests with a particular focus on sterile insect technology (SIT). At REACT, she is working on the development of a generic sex strain to separate male and female individuals for SIT programs using modern genome editing technologies.
Evelyn Vollmeister | Project Manager
Justus-Liebig-University Gießen, Germany
Evelyn Vollmeister is a project manager and biologist. As a biologist, she worked on host-pathogen interactions in the plant and human field with a focus on RNA-related issues. Her further career focused on scientific project management, e.g. of a priority program. At REACT she is working as project manager and takes care of all administrative issues of the involved partners and the successful completion of the project.
Sam Vanbergen | Researcher
Royal Museum for Central Africa, Belgium
Sam Vanbergen is a biologist researching the mechanisms of fruit fly invasion at the population level. Sam Vanbergen obtains findings through genome sequencing.
Panagiota Koskinioti | Researcher
University of Thessaly, Greece
Panagiota Koskinioti is a biochemist and biotechnologist at the Laboratory of Entomology and Agricultural Zoology, University of Thessaly. Her research interests focus on studying the interaction of insects with bacteria to improve environmentally friendly pest control methods such as the sterile and incompatible insect technique. Their research activities also focus on the development of genetic sex strains to control mosquitoes (Aedes aegypti, Aedes albopictus) and invasive fruit flies.
Pablo Deschepper | Researcher
Royal Museum for Central Africa, Belgium
Pablo Deschepper is a researcher at the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium. Pablo is particularly interested in population genomics of rapidly invading fruit fly pests.
Vasilis G. Rodovitis | PhD Student
University of Thessaly, Greece
Vasilis Rodovitis is an entomologist and a member of the scientific team of the Laboratory of Entomology and Agrozoology at the University of Thessaly since January 2016. His scientific interests are biology, ecology and especially behavior and management of insect pests in orchard crops. Currently, Vasilis is working as a PhD student on the overwintering ability, distribution, and interspecific competition of fruit flies in Europe.
Lucas Prates | PhD Student
Justus-Liebig-University Gießen, Germany
Lucas Prates is a chemical engineer and holds an MA degree in Agricultural Engineering from the Universidade Federal de Viçosa (Brazil). He has research experience in environmentally friendly methods to control insect pests in stored grain and chromatographic methods to detect pesticide residues in agricultural products. At REACT, Lucas is applying molecular techniques to help develop new genetic strains for sexing tephritids.
Gur Pines | Researcher
Agricultural Research Organization, Israel
Gur Pines is a synthetic biologist focusing on the development of CRISPR-based biosensors and genome editing.
Georgia Papadogiorgou | PhD Student
University of Thessaly, Greece
Georgia Papadogiorgou is a member of the scientific team of the Laboratory of Entomology and Agricultural Zoology at the University of Thessaly since 2015. She completed her MSc thesis on the sexual behavior of the Mediterranean fruit fly Ceratitis capitata. Now she is studying towards a PhD at the University of Thessaly, focusing on the ecology of medfly under different stress conditions. From 2017 to 2019 she participated in a research program (Life–Biodelear) dealing with the management of fruit flies with the implementation of precision agriculture practices, as well as the mass trapping method with the use of innovative and environmentally friendly attractants. Also, she was involved in the research project FF-IPM from 2019 to 2022.
Panagiota Stathopoulou | Researcher
University of Patras, Greece
Panagiota Stathopoulou received her first degree in Biology from the University of Athens, and completed her PhD in Microbial Biotechnology at the same University. Her main research interests include: the study of the microbial diversity in various environments/hosts using –omic technologies, bioprospecting for novel microbial industrial enzymes from extreme environments, and research on hydrolytic enzymes (production, purification, biochemical characterization and biotechnological applications).
Michael Anranter | Communication Expert
Oikoplus GmbH, Austria
Michael Anranter is a political scientist and cultural and social anthropologist. His work focuses on the interconnections of human and non-human beings and infrastructures. In particular, he focuses on how trust and mistrust are mediated through transportation infrastructures. In the context of REACT, Michael acts as a communications expert for Work Package 7 Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation. He draws on many years of experience in the communication of EU-funded research projects.
Thomas Stollenwerk | Communication Expert
Oikoplus GmbH, Austria
Thomas Stollenwerk is a science communication professional supporting the REACT partnership in its dissemination and outreach activities. As a studied political scientist he has worked as a creative strategist in marketing and political campaigning before turning to journalism. As former editor-in-chief of Biorama Magazine he has begun working on making research and science accessible to wider audiences. As co-founder and managing partner of Oikoplus GmbH in Vienna he develops communication strategies and participatory formats for science and innovation projects.
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