Bio
Michael was born and raised in Rome as an Italian-Australian. Aged 18 he moved to Australia to read a BSc(Hons) in Genetics at the University of Melbourne. He then moved to Scotland to undertake a PhD at the University of St Andrews. He worked for a year as a postdoctoral Research Associate at St Andrews University, and then for six years at the Medical Research Council Human Genetics Unit in Edinburgh. He moved to the University of the West of England in 2002 where he is now a Professor of Genetics. His main scientific interest is in RNA Biology and its fundamental importance in development and disease.

Bio
Davide Barbagallo is an Associate Professor of Experimental Biology at University of Catania, Italy (https://www.biometec.unict.it/docenti/davide.barbagallo?eng). Davide focused his research on non-coding RNAs since his PhD course, in 2005. In 2010, his PhD thesis was awarded as the best in the field of complex biological systems from the Gioenian Academy. In 2017 he was awarded the Umberto Veronesi Foundation Post-doctoral fellowship and he joined Professor Jørgen Kjems’ non-coding RNA lab, University of Aarhus, Denmark, where he spent 6 months to improve his knowledge on circular RNAs (circRNAs), another class of (mostly) non-coding RNAs, recently discovered as critical regulators of gene expression. During his stay at the non-coding RNA lab, under the tutorship of Dr. Thomas Birkballe Hansen, Davide cloned the sequence of circSMARCA5 into an expression vector and showed the tumor suppressive function and mechanism of action of this circRNA in glioblastoma multiforme. In 2018, Davide got back to University of Catania, at the Department of Biomedical and Biotechnological Sciences where he has continued his work on circRNAs. Davide published more than 60 articles, most of which centered on the study of non-coding RNAs and their involvement in the regulation of gene expression. The main application field of this knowledge is glioblastoma and, more recently, another brain tumor: meningioma. The study that will be described in this talk has been funded by the internal university funding of collaborative research PIACERI 2024-2026 / Linea di Intervento 1 - acronym of the project “MiPiaGli”.