Projects and Collaborations

Creating outreach and educational material on plastic pollution and its effects on human health, for school kids and teachers, for Semi di Scienza.

SWOT is a next-generation satellite altimeter that brings a new perspective to ocean dynamics — fittingly, much of its early scientific discovery is being carried out by a new generation of oceanographers. Conducted and edited 53 interviews with these early-career researchers, as a tribute to the generation that will help chart the field's future, seen through the lens of the SWOT mission.

Created a dedicated blog for the BioSWOT-Med oceanographic campaign in the Mediterranean (April–May 2023), including three series of pre-departure interviews with the science team — on their research themes, their instruments, and early career researchers taking part — then updated the blog daily during the campaign with dispatches from the team at sea. At the end of the campaign, collected the material into this book, organised in four sections: the three interview series, plus a fourth gathering stories and anecdotes shared by the researchers while at sea. A complete record of the campaign — the science, the tools, and the people who made it happen.

Science and policy communication for Italy's national campaign advocating for a Deposit Return System (DRS) for beverage containers — a policy designed to increase collection rates and reduce container litter.

• Technical writing — Authored articles on deposit return systems in Italy and across Europe, translating policy and regulatory complexity into clear, accessible content for campaign audiences
• Data analysis — Analysed the data behind the campaign's brand-audit tracker (the ABR Radar) throughout the engagement

A lighter-touch citizen engagement project with a colleague at the University of Pisa and the NGO Sons of the Ocean — designed the brand-audit protocol and trained volunteers to categorise macrolitter on Tuscan beaches, building on Sons of the Ocean's existing beach clean-ups. The protocol continued in use after the project ended.

Developed two outreach packages for this NORAD-funded UNEP project: awareness-raising materials for policymakers and government officials on strengthening plastic waste management, and educational materials for schools, fishing communities, and the public to promote behavioural change.

The first quantification of macrolitter abundance on the Durance riverbank — a baseline dataset that would later make it possible to track change over time when the same sites were revisited in ZPLAST (2024–2026).

• Funding & design — Helped write the research proposal and designed the scientific protocol used to survey the riverbank
• Citizen science training — Trained citizen scientists to collect standardised field data in the field
• Data analysis & publication — Analysed the results and authored a peer-reviewed paper documenting the findings

Scientific coordination and citizen-scientist training aboard the R/V Bonita for Expédition MED's 2020 survey — developing an onboard protocol that allowed citizen scientists to count and classify microplastics themselves during the campaign, as well as sampling floating microplastics and writing the mission report. That protocol was later adopted across subsequent Expédition MED campaigns.

Scientific coordination and citizen-scientist training aboard the R/V Free Soul for Expédition MED's 2019 survey — sampling floating microplastics, recording environmental variables, and preserving samples for genomic analysis of the plastisphere. The data contributed to Delacuvellerie et al. (2022) on plastisphere microbial communities.

Initiated and co-wrote the research proposal with Legambiente, then led scientific coordination of the resulting citizen science expedition aboard the R/V Ainez for Expédition MED — training volunteers, managing field data, and preserving samples for laboratory analysis. The microplastics and plastisphere results, combined with the 2017 campaign, were published in Amaral-Zettler et al. (2021).

Edited an expert summary report on plastic pollution for the Plastic and Ocean Platform — a collaboration of 30 research scientists and 20 NGOs — following a 2017 workshop at The Camp, Aix-en-Provence; published in 2018.

Had the idea to combine Expedition MED's at-sea sampling capability and citizen volunteers with plastisphere genomics research, and reached out to bring NIOZ and ENEA on board as scientific partners. Led scientific coordination aboard the R/V Ainez for the resulting 2017 survey — sampling floating microplastics, recording environmental variables, and preserving samples for genomic analysis of the plastisphere; trained citizen scientists and managed field data.

Wrote four of the five chapters of this policy report on Italy's response to the Paris Agreement — covering future climate scenarios, the international institutional framework, climate justice and trade law, and European energy democracy. Chapter five, on Italy's specific commitments and decarbonisation roadmap, was written by a co-author.