Bio
Prof. Giorgia Gioacchini is an Associate Professor in Cell Biology and Reproductive Biology of Marine Vertebrates at the Polytechnic University of Marche (UNIVPM), Italy. Her research focuses on marine pollution, reproductive toxicology and developmental biology, with particular attention to the effects of anthropogenic stressors and emerging contaminants on marine organisms and ecosystem health. She investigates the impact of microplastics, endocrine disruptors and other pollutants on reproductive processes, embryonic development and maternal transfer mechanisms in Mediterranean marine species. Her work integrates multidisciplinary approaches including molecular biology, histology, transcriptomics and biomonitoring techniques. Prof. Gioacchini is involved in several national and international projects on marine biodiversity conservation, sustainable fisheries and environmental health, and has authored more than 110 peer-reviewed scientific publications, with an H-index of 42 (Scopus).

Bio
Dr. Alexander Werth is an evolutionary biologist whose research focuses on the anatomy, physiology, and ecology of marine mammals, especially baleen and toothed whales. He currently investigates plastic pollution, fishing gear entanglement, and other threats to whale feeding. His interest in cetaceans was sparked by reading, at age 8, that whales evolved from four-legged terrestrial ancestors who returned to the sea, and that their bodies contain clues of this transition, such as their vestigial pelvic bones. He worked at the Duke University Marine Laboratory while earning his bachelor’s degree, then earned master’s and PhD degrees from Harvard University while working with marine mammals at the New England Aquarium in Boston. He worked on arctic bowhead whales with indigenous Inupiat subsistence hunters as a postdoctoral fellow in Alaska with the North Slope Borough Department of Wildlife Management, and was a Fulbright Scholar studying coral reef ecology in the Republic of Maldives. He conducts biomechanics experiments at his home institution and regularly travels for research to marine field stations in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Iceland, and other locations.