Prof. Edoardo Puglisi is Associate Professor in Agricultural Microbiology at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and the leader of a dynamic scientific group in Agriculture and Environmental Microbiology currently comprising 3 post-docs and 5 PhD students. He is author of >115 publications in peer-reviewed Scopus-indexed Journals (H index 33, 3409 total citations)
Research interests of Prof. Puglisi’s group focus on the interactions between microorganisms and chemical compounds in the environment, with particular attention to the ecology and genetic basis of xenobiotics biodegradations and soil fertility. He first worked and published on the bioavailability and biodegradation of organic and inorganic pollutants in soils and sediments, on the development of biochemical and microbiological indexes of soil quality, and on the assessment of plant-microbes interactions at the rhizosphere In the recent years he focused on the assessment of the microbial ecology of different environments ranging from contaminated soils to plastic wastes and to fermented foods, with a joint application of culturomics and molecular approaches. A strong effort is dedicated to the isolation and identification of microbial strains with biotechnological potentials, especially as plant-growth promoting strains, xenobiotic degraders or strains with biocontrol activities towards bacteria and fungi.
He is the founder and President of ISA R&D Srl, a spin-off company working on innovative microbial solutions for agriculture, and in 2023 he chaired Agrifoodplast, the 1st International Conference on micro and nanoplastics in the agrifood chains.