Hi, I’m Emanuele!
I’ve always been passionate about Biology, ever since watching the Italian version of Once Upon a Time… Life!.
I used to spend hours glued to the TV and then give surprisingly detailed explanations of the musculoskeletal system every time my mum complained about a mild backache, usually caused by stepping on all the LEGO pieces I’d left around. LEGO was my other big passion, and probably one of the reasons I ended up being good at Maths too.
I stayed loyal to Biology until high school, when I was seduced by Physics. The idea that black holes could be spatiotemporal tunnels completely blew my mind, and reading Angels & Demons by Dan Brown (my apologies, I was young and still unaware of what good literature actually was) became my first introduction to antimatter.
So I decided to study Physics for my Bachelor’s, with the plan of jumping into Theoretical Physics. That lasted until I realised that what truly motivated me wasn’t abstract theory for its own sake, but working on practical problems and building things (just like I did with LEGO).
This tension between a love for deep theoretical concepts and a desire to build something tangible led to my first quarter-life crisis. During that period, I explored different paths: I launched various blogs, led a team that won an online marketing contest with the best idea for an e-commerce shop, and another team that placed third by public vote for the overall best startup idea at a contest in Sicily.
Eventually, though, the call of Science proved too strong — even if I was still pretty confused at the time. Ironically, the thing that saved my mind from spiralling into chaos was… chaos itself.
Between my Bachelor’s and my Master’s, I discovered Complex Systems and Chaos Theory. It was love at first sight. What fascinated me most was how a single mathematical formalism could describe phenomena across completely different fields. I wrote my BSc thesis on complexity in financial markets and, from there, found my way back to Biology through what is arguably the most complex object in the known universe: the human brain.
For my MSc, I focused on Applied Physics and the Physics of Complex Systems, tailoring my curriculum toward computational subjects, where I had my first real exposure to AI. I also did an Erasmus+ in Finland, researching how Network Science can be used to study the human brain.
My MSc project eventually brought me to the Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC, best acronym ever), where I pursued a PhD in Computational Neuroscience.
During my PhD, I used foundational AI models to study the brain at multiple scales and became particularly interested in neuronal decoding. In one project, I used simple RNNs to predict the movement of a cursor on a 2D plane controlled by a monkey, achieving surprisingly good results (over 70% accuracy).
After a pandemic and several personal challenges, I completed my PhD within the tight timeframe covered by the fellowship and went on to do an internship at Accenture BioInnovation Labs, working on Knowledge Graph Embedding models for gene–disease associations.
I’m currently working at Epoch Biodesign, a recently Series-A-funded startup, where I use AI tools to design better enzymes, including enzymes for nylon decomposition.