After graduating from highschool in Bolzano (Italy), I studied medicine at the Medical University Innsbruck and completed successfully medical school with the thesis “Functional and immunohistochemical studies of pharmacological inhibition of iNOS in a mouse model of islet cell transplantation” in 2004. I started his surgical residency at the regional hospital Wil, St. Gallen, in Switzerland and then moved to Zürich, where I am still working in the Department of Visceral and Transplantation Surgery led by Professor Pierre-Alain Clavien. Since my MD thesis, my major focus of interest lies in the field of transplantation. In January 2009 I joined the HBP and Transplant laboratory of Professor Clavien.

My major research focus lies in experimental approaches tempering ischemia reperfusion injury. Of these, RIPC (remote ischaemic preconditioning) appears to be the most promising strategy. Whilst resulting in levels of organ protection akin to direct IPC (ischaemic preconditioning), RIPC is simple and non-invasive, and does not stress the target organ directly. In RIPC, blood flow is mechanically interrupted for repetitive periods in a remote body part, usually a limb. Presumably, the ischaemic periods locally release factors that confer systemic protection in distant organs. However, the mechanisms underlying the mitigating effects of RIPC remain elusive. The major focus of my basic science research is the assessment of RIPC-mediated protection from hepatic IR injury and investigation of potential mechanism of RIPC action.