Phi did his PhD at Imperial College London in the lab of Andrea Crisanti. During his PhD, Phi demonstrated that engineered nucleases can be used as genetic drive elements and synthetic sex-ratio distorters to control natural populations of malaria transmitting mosquitoes. For his post-doc, Phi got an EMBO outgoing fellowship and moved to sunny California at Caltech to work under the supervision of Bruce Hay. At Caltech he tested whether alternative gene drive systems can be developed using engineered toxin-antidote systems with the idea of replacing natural population with disease-resistant ones. After 2 years in California, Phi moved to Perugia Italy with a Marie Curie fellowship. At the University of Perugia, his research interests were broadened and Phi decided to teach himself computational genomics and chose as a subject mosquito Y chromosomes - which until then remained black boxes. In 2014 Phi accepted a Rita Levi Moltancini carreer developmet award and established his own lab. He continues to follow his interests to develop synthetic elements for controlling insects - broadening his focus beyond just malaria mosquitoes - and to improve our methods, tools and ultimately understanding of insect biology.
PostDocs
Rocco D'Amato
[[Image:|left|200px|]] Rocco did his PhD in the lab of Giuseppe Saconne in Naples.....
