Educational Background: RC, after her degree in Physics
at the University of Bologna, Italy, attended several courses both
in Italy and abroad and acquired experience and theoretical
background in different fields, such as Computer Science, Membrane
and Protein Biophysics, Bioenergetics and Irreversible
Thermodynamics.
Professional Experience: After working in Laboratories of
Biophysics both in the United States and in Germany, in 1987 RC
became Assistant Professor of Biophysics at the University of
Bologna Italy. Since 1/10/2001 she is full professor of
Biochemistry/Biophysics in the same University; RC has been working
mainly in the fields of membrane and protein Biophysics
(particularly with bacteriorhodopsin from Halobacterium Halobium
and F1F0 ATPases from mesophilic organisms), both experimentally
and theoretically. Presently she is interested in computer
modelling of relevant biological processes, such as protein folding
and modelling of their stability and interactions. One major field
of research is the application of machine learning methods to the
prediction of secondary and tertiary structure of proteins from
their aminoacid residue sequences, particularly of membrane
proteins and their transmembrane topology. one active research
field is the annotation of mutations disease related and the
prediction of their role at the level od structural systems
biology. Presently she is the group leader of the Biocoputing
Unit of the Interdipartimental Centre for Biotechnological
Researches (CIRB) of the University of Bologna, Italy and her
researches are devoted to different aspects of protein modelling,
including prediction of secondary and tertiary structures with
neural networks, hidden Markov models, genetic algorithms,
molecular docking, protein reaction mechanisms and de novo design
of helical peptides (for details see
http://lipid.biocomp.unibo.it). At present the focus is mainly the
implementation of integrated platforms for genome/proteome
annotation, sequence annotation after alternative splicing in the
human proteome, prediction of the relation of protein folding,
misfolding and deseases in humans, search for SNPs in different
genomes and their validation. RC is the author of about 300
scientific papers and presented her work at several (over 300)
national and international meetings (for details see http://lipid.biocomp.unibo.it/casadio/cv.html).
Other Activities: RC with the Biocomputing Unit is active
in organizing International Schools on Bioinformatics. She
co-chaired WABI 2005, and act as Associate Editor for Advances in
Bioinformatics, BMC Research Notes, she is in the Editorial board
of BMC Bioinformatics and BioData Mining. She has been president of
the Bologna International Master in Bioinformatics (2007-20015);
she has been a member of the board of directors of I.N.B.B,
an Italian InterUniversity Consortium, acting as a representative
of the Italian Minister of MIUR; of ISCB, the International Society
of Computational Biology; of the Italian Society of Bioinformatics.
She is correspondent member of the Accademia delle Scienze
dell'Istituto di Bologna. Since 2011 she is joint professor of the
Shangai Jiao Tong University