Michele Morgante - Biography#

Michele Morgante is professor of Genetics at the University of Udine and the Scientific Director of Istituto di Genomica Applicata in Udine, a leading center for genome sequencing and analysis that he contributed to create. He has been President of the Italian Society of Agricultural Genetics (SIGA). He was educated as a geneticist at the University of Padova and of Udine and then worked for 5 years at DuPont Crop Genomics as Senior Scientist, before taking a permanent position at the University of Udine. He is a member of Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei and has received the 2005 Medal for Physical and Natural Sciences of the Accademia Nazionale delle Scienze called “dei XL”. He is section editor of BMC Genetics and has been associate editor of BMC Plant Biology, Theoretical and Applied Genetics and Tree Genetics and Genomes. In 2011 he has been awarded by the European Research Council an Advanced Grant for the analysis of plant pan genomes. He is inventor on 16 US and international patents concerning genome analysis methods and the use of genes in plant breeding and transgenic applications. His research group has been instrumental in establishing a number of genetic technology platforms that are now being widely deployed in plant genomic research. His research is currently focusing on genome analysis in plants, including sequencing and genome evolution studies and epigenomics. Among his main scientific achievements are the first reports on nuclear and chloroplast microsatellites in plants, the creation of the first physical map of the maize genome, the first analyses of structural hypervariation in plant genomes and the adoption of the pan genome model to describe plant genomes.