Maria VIVO | Curriculum

Dr Maria Vivo graduated in Biological Sciences at the University of Naples Federico II in 1998. From 1998 to 2001, she was enrolled in the PhD programme in Genetics at the Department of Genetics and General and Molecular Biology of the University of Naples Federico II. During this period, she worked on a project aimed at the functional characterisation of the human oncosuppressor p14ARF, which has a key role in the regulation of cell proliferation. She contributed to the identification of different proteins that, by interacting with ARF modulate its activity.

From 2003 to 2005 she was post-doc at the Institute of Molecular Medicine (IMM) of the University of Lisbon. She worked on a project entitled "Transcription-coupled RNA surveillance in human genetic diseases caused by splice site mutations" funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). During this period she was Visiting scientist at the "Division of Medical and Molecular Genetics, GKT School of Medicine, Guy's Hospital" London, UK.

From Dec 2005 to Nov 2019 she was enrolled as Research Assistant at the Department of Biology of the University of Naples Federico II. In this period, she was involved in several research projects, exploring the role of the human oncosuppressor p14ARF in the control of cell proliferation in both cancerous and keratinocytes cell lines. Recently, upon the discovery of a novel function of ARF in cytoskeleton remodelling, she starts to investigate the functional role of the interaction between the Focal Adhesion Kinase (FAK) and ARF protein and the relationships between cell adhesion, cell proliferation and autophagy.

In November 2019 she got a tenure track position as Researcher in Genetics (RTDb) at the University of Salerno at the Department of Chemistry and Biology "A. Zambelli ".