Adduci, Gloria | Italy

I am a PhD student at University of Perugia (Italy) on Plant Biology and Agrobiotechnology, focusing on the governance of biotechnology in agriculture in developing countries, with a specific focus on the situation in South East Asia.
 
 I made my graduation in Chemistry at University of Milan (Italy) followed by a post-graduation master on Gene and Transgene tracking and monitoring in food and environmental samples (FSE-European Community, 800-hours course). This course gave me the chance for an internship first, and then to work for 3 years and a half at Genetic Rights Council, an NGO in Rome.
 
I started working at Genetic Rights Council in 2004, in a new project called Agro-biotechnology Observatory (OA). Its aim was to create an international network for participating on decision making process and informing about the possible risks of GMOs for developed and developing countries. Moreover, we concentrated on monitoring and analyzing public response and participation in the decision making process on deliberate releases of GMOs into the environment and the Regulation (EC) 1829/2003, food and feed.
 
We also developed a European Project, PSX2, to explore the participatory role of civil society organisations (CSOs) in new scientific and technological developments, with particular reference to experiences in the development of agricultural biotechnology (GM plants, food and feeds) with a collaboration of some European partners (ZERP, Germany; GENET, Switzerland; Gene Watch, UK; CRII GEN, France; ELF, Estonia; Université de Caen Basse Normandie, France; Universita´di Perugia, DBVBAZ, Italy).
 
For a better understanding of US regulation, I spent three months at Davis University (California, USA), working on GMOs regulation in US: legal aspects, public participation on decision making process and comparison between US and EU systems.
In 2007 I moved to Singapore and I spent 6 months working in Downstream Processing Group at Bioprocessing Technology Institute (BTI) in Singapore, focusing on the engineering and scale-up aspects of protein purification, cell separation and cell preservation. In particular, I worked on chromatographic purification of IgM for human embryonic stem cells (hESC). This experience made me understand that lab work was definitely not my main passion, so in 2008 I started my PhD.

 
Projekt at IAS-STS: Governing agrobiotechnology in developing countries: the case of South East Asia
 
I started my PhD with the idea to broaden my knowledge on governance of agrobiotechnology in developing countries and taking the chance of living in South East Asia to deepen my research in this specific area. So far, I have explored the situation of biotechnology in agriculture in Thailand and Vietnam, trying to frame their specific position in the context of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) policy and of international cooperation on food and agriculture.
 
Legislation and regulation of GMOs, information and transparency, public participation in the governance of biotechnology (applied to agriculture) are some of my interests. Understanding how trade agreements on food and agriculture influenced developing countries is something I would like to develop in my thesis, combined with understanding how better chances could be given to developing countries and how a profitable cooperation between developed and developing countries could be put in place.

 
 Selected publications

Lee, J., Tscheliessnig, A., Chen, A., Lee, Y.Y., Adduci, G., Choo, A., Jungbauer, A., Adaptation of hybridomas to protein-free media results in a simplified two-step immunoglobulin M purification process, Journal of Chromatography A. 2009 Mar 27; 1216(13): 2683-8. Epub 2008 Oct 21.
 
Adduci, G., Lener, M., 2008. GMOs: a comparison between US and Europe. In “Dal Seme”, n 4/2008: p. 49-54.
 
Adduci, G., Lener, M., 2008. Two ways to say GMOs. In “Sapere”, June 2008: p.66-71.
 
Adduci, G., Lauria, G., Lener, M., Vinesi, P., 2007. Twilight decisions. In “Sapere”, April 2007: p.62-67.
 
Adduci, G., Agrobiotechnologies: on a way for a major trust. In “Prometeus”, on-line ANBI (Italian National Biotechnologies Association) journal, number 13_06, July/ August, 2006.
 
Adduci, G., Lener, M., European Food Safety Authority (EFSA): limits and possibilities. EFSA, a new legislative overwiev for public partecipation on decision making proces. In “Prometeus”, on-line ANBI (Italian National Biotechnologies Association) journal, number 5_05, March/April, 2005.