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Bioorganic
Chemistry and Bio-Crystallography laboratory (B2Cl)
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Bioorganic Chemistry and
Bio-Crystallography laboratory (B2Cl) |
Who
am I?
My
name is Stefano Benini,
I am assistant professor in Organic Chemistry (SSD CHIM06) in the Faculty of
Science and Technology. (open day 2014:
http://bit.ly/video_openday_unibz)
As
Free University of Bolzano is trilingual and the courses are
held in: Italian, German and English I needed to certificate my level of
knowledge of these languages. At the moment I have a C1 in English
and a B2 in German
(but I am planning to improve it to C1 We will see whether I will ever make it
or not!!). I am mother tongue Italian.
I passed the habilitation to Associate Professor in 2013 but I have not been promoted yet…
My research focuses on the study of the pathogenicity
factors of Erwinia amylovora the
agent of Fire Blight in apple and pear. Moreover I
have a long standing collaboration with Professor Stefano Ciurli
(Department of Pharmacy and Biotechnology, University of Bologna) to study
urease and other metalloproteins.
I have a background
education in Agricultural Science with a Master Degree (Laurea)
obtained at the University of Bologna. After a period of research in protein
crystallography carried out at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL)
Hamburg Germany from 1996 to 2000, in 2001 I was awarded the
degree of Doctor of
Philosophy in Chemistry at the University of York with a thesis on: Structure and
Function Relationships of Urease and Cytochrome c-553
from Bacillus pasteurii. My PhD supervisors were Professor Wojciech Rypniewski and Professor Keith S. Wilson.
You can search for the protein structures I have
solved that are publicly available in the Protein Data Bank (PDB).
As an example of the kind of information you can get
with X-ray crystallography here are some nice pictures:
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A lecture about the power of protein X-ray
crystallography can be found here:
Royal
Institution Lecture by Professor Stephen Curry
Two short videos on more practical aspects could be found here:
http://richannel.org/understanding-crystallography-part-one
http://richannel.org/understanding-crystallography-part-two
Places where I have been doing research before:
2007-2009 AstraZeneca
Alderly Park, Macclesfield,
United Kingdom (poster: Structural
Sciences at AstraZeneca)
2002-2007 York Structural
Biology Laboratory (YSBL) (University of York) (poster: the
last structure I solved before leaving YSBL!)
2000-2002 International
Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB) / Elettra synchrotron
Trieste, Italy
1996-2000 European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL)
Hamburg Germany
1992-1996 Agricultural Chemistry Laboratory,
University of Bologna
My main hobby is playing the clarinet.
I began in December 1999 on my own and then in October 2000 in Trieste I
learned the basis from maestro Paolo Spincich and
joined the Complesso Bandistico Arcobaleno
(2001-2002). After moving to the UK I played with the University of York Concert Band
in 2003, the York Concert
Band in 2004-2006 (York, UK), in 2007 with the KEMS Concert band (Macclesfield,
UK). In 2009 I moved back to Italy and joined the corpo musicale M.
Mascagni. From January 2010 I joined a group called “Music in Progress” conducted
by Rossella Simonazzi,
playing music ranging from classic to jazz and contemporary etc.,.
Since 2012 I am back with the corpo musicale M.
Mascagni. Here is a photo of me, Valentino, Giorgia and Mario while playing the clarinet with the band
at the Flicorno d’Oro 2014.
Click on this link to see interesting photos of la Crème de la
crème!
Last but not least is this link
about “why living in York ruins your life” forever… yes because if have to
leave York after having lived there you will feel homesick for the rest of your
life! (Four incredible years did the job for me!) http://www.buzzfeed.com/jobarrow/york-is-the-best
No 
discrimination