Biosciences eastern and central Africa – International Livestock Research Institute (BecA-ILRI) Hub, Nairobi, Kenya

Francesca Stomeo was appointed as a Scientist – Capacity Building at BecA-ILRI Hub, in January 2015 after the completion of a three-year post-doctoral fellowship in genomics. She is interested in microbial ecology, genomics, crop improvement and viral diversity. She has worked extensively on microbial diversity studies in different environments, crop diagnostics and improvement, including the understanding of emerging diseases using genomics tool. At the BecA-ILRI Hub she established the genomics platform, currently used routinely for metagenomics, transcriptomics and gene expression analysis in crops and livestock systems and in environmental research projects. As a capacity building scientist, she mentors and supervises visiting scientists and research staff providing them the right environment for their research. She has expertise in microbiology, molecular biology, bio-technology and genomics.

Originally from the South of Italy, Francesca obtained a BSc in Biology from the University of Pavia in the North of Italy, an Advanced Studies Diploma (DEA) in Genetics and Microbial Technologies from the University of Seville (Spain) and a European Marie Curie Ph.D. in Microbiology and Molecular Biology at the Institute of Natural Resources and Agrobiology of Seville (IRNASE), part of the Superior Council of Scientific Investigations (CSIC), in Spain. Before joining the BecA-ILRI Hub in 2012 she was a post doc at the Institute for Microbial Biotechnology and Metagenomics (IMBM) at the University of the Western Cape, (UWC), Cape Town, South Africa.