Dr. Treu is expert on molecular biology and microbial ecology for investigating the molecular mechanisms involved in carbon cycling, bioenergy production and CO2 capture. She contributed to developing novel bioinformatics approaches for reconstruction of microbial genomes from metagenomics and metatranscriptomics. She studies metabolic mechanisms involved in shaping environmental and human-related microbiomes to unravel population dynamics, using genome-scale metabolic models. Since 2018 she is Researcher at Department of Biology, University of Padua (Italy), using system biology and molecular biology applied to microbial communities. She has been Senior Researcher at Department of Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Denmark (Denmark) working on microbial ecology applied to bioenergy production. In 2008 she has been visiting academic at School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, University of New South Wales (Australia) analyzing the transcriptome in archaea isolated from Antarctica.

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Looking at my long-term activity, my research is mainly focused on Bioenergy, a field that I started to investigate in 2013 mainly using genomic and bioinformatics approaches. Due to my scientific background in molecular biology, I explore this topic in a very original way combining different disciplines and developing collaborations with scientists having different backgrounds such as engineers and physicists. My long-term experience at the Denmark Technical University (DTU, 2014-2018) was developed in a worldwide recognized international environment. I worked as researcher and senior researcher with f the world top ranked scientists in the field of renewable energy. My recruitment at DTU was motivated by the need of reinforcing the bioinformatics section, and, thanks to my contribution, the group evolved rapidly moving to a new approach based on microbial metagenomics. Thanks to the dynamic and stimulating international environment, not only I increased my knowledge of bioenergy but, even more importantly, I established and tightened collaborations with the most influential scientists in the field. I decided to move back to my native country in 2018 in order to boost a technology transfer to the Department of Biology (DiBio) of University of Padova, reinforcing the microbial metagenomics and bioinformatics sections. Considering the development of my research in the next few years, the main topic will be the investigation of the mechanisms behind the microbial syntropies and of phages-microbes interactions in anaerobic ecosystems. Recent scientific advances allow us to unravel this conundrum, and thus, to address several key-challenges that will lead to optimized bioprocesses. However, many aspects still need to be clarified particularly in the phage-host interaction process. I am planning to develop my research using a daring approach based on advanced bioinformatics combined with state-of-the-art genomics. I expect that my research will provide important findings both regarding fundamental and applied knowledge. Results will lead to the optimization of the microbial resource management for efficient CO2 transformation.

Last update: 01/07/2025