LETTURE PLENARIE

BIO:

Bart Lievens (°04/06/1975) is a full professor at KU Leuven, where he leads the CMPG Laboratory for Process Microbial Ecology and Bioinspirational Management. During his career, he has been studying many aspects of microbial ecology, including phylogenetic and physiological diversity and interactions between microbes and the environment, other microbes, plants and insects. During the last decade, he has intensively studied the role of microbes in plant-insect interactions, including plant-pollinator interactions, and in the multi-trophic interactions that occur between plants, herbivores, natural enemies and secondary natural enemies aiming to improve plant pollination and biological control of insect pests. To this end, the Lievens’ lab uses tools and concepts from different fields, including microbiology, microbial ecology, molecular biology, chemical ecology, community ecology and entomology. In total, Prof. Lievens has published over 200 publications in diverse journals.

BIO:

Stanislav Gorb is Professor and Director at the Zoological Institute of the Kiel University, Germany. He received his PhD degree in zoology and entomology at the Schmalhausen Institute of Zoology of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kiev (Ukraine). Gorb was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Vienna (Austria), a research assistant at University of Jena, a group leader at the Max Planck Institutes for Developmental Biology in Tübingen and for Metals Research in Stuttgart (Germany). Gorb’s research focuses on morphology, structure, biomechanics, physiology, and evolution of surface-related functional systems in animals and plants, as well as the development of biologically inspired technological surfaces and systems. He received the Schlossmann Award in Biology and Materials Science in 1995, International Forum Design Gold Award in 2011 and Materialica “Best of” Award in 2011. In 1998, he was the BioFuture Competition winner for his works on biological attachment devices as possible sources for biomimetics. In 2018, he received Karl-Ritter-von-Frisch Medal of German Zoological Society. Gorb is Corresponding member of Academy of the Science and Literature Mainz, Germany (since 2010) and Member of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, Germany (since 2011). Gorb has authored several books, more than 500 papers in peer-reviewed journals, and five patents.

BIO:

ITA

Professore associato di entomologia generale e applicata presso il Dipartimento di Agraria dell’Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II. Nel 2013 ha conseguito un dottorato in biologia animale presso l’Università degli Studi di Milano. Le sue ricerche riguardano diversi aspetti dell’ecologia e dell’evoluzione degli insetti. In particolare, si focalizzano sullo studio: i. delle simbiosi insetti-batteri; ii. dell’ecologia ed evoluzione degli insetti tramite l’integrazione di informazioni genetiche, morfologiche ed ecologiche; iii. della biodiversità e struttura delle comunità di invertebrati degli agroecosistemi attraverso metodi molecolari.

ENG

Associate professor of general and applied entomology at the Department of Agriculture of the University of Naples Federico II. In 2013, he got a PhD in animal biology at the University of Milan. His research concerns various aspects of the ecology and evolution of insects. In particular, they focus on the study of: i. the insect-bacteria symbioses; ii. the ecology and evolution of insects through the integration of genetic, morphological and ecological information; iii. the biodiversity and structure of the invertebrate communities of agroecosystems through molecular methods.