Alessandro Ponzo

A.P. is an Italian veterinary, graduated from the University of Perugia, Italy in 2007.

During the course of his studies he was an intern of the Department of Physiology and Ethology of the Faculty of  Veterinary Medicine for more than four years, were got the chances to conduct a large number of investigation on the behaviour and the welfare of many mammals species and completed a thesis about “Odontocete’s Cognition”.

Since 1999 he has been involved in a number of research projects on marine mammals, working in the United States, Bahamas, Russia, Italy, Ireland and Spain, working and volunteering for Universities, NGO and research centres.

He is a passionate sailor, and his experience led him to cross the Atlantic in the Tall-Ship Race 2000. He collaborated for several years with the Italian Stranding Network, rescuing injured sea turtles and performing necropsies. He also collaborated with the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canarias and the Canaries Stranding network, Canary Island (ES), performing post-mortem investigations on cetaceans. In 2005 he took part at the constitution of E.R Environmental Relief, a non-profit organization involved in the study and protection of the marine ecosystem in The Bahamas. His main interests are focused on the health and the effects of anthropogenic pressure on marine mammals. During the last decade he has been cultivating his passion for nature and extreme-sport photography and his work was presented to the public in a variety of venues.

Livia Zapponi

L.Z. graduated in Biological Science in 2004 from the University of Rome, “La Sapienza”.

In 2005 she moved to England to get a deeper knowledge about environmental conservation and Human Dimension, that bring her to graduate from a Master of Science on Environmental Management.

Thanks to this experience, she collaborated in 2006 and 2007 with a research centre in Moray Firth, Scotland, studying and monitoring the ecology of dolphins, porpoises and whales.

Since 2007 she is a PhD student at the University of Rome.

L.F. is an Italian Veterinary, graduated from the University of Perugia in 2007.

During her student career she intern at the Veterinary Hospital by the University of Perugia and were her work was mainly focus on the internal medicine. Her final dissertation was on the “Anatomo-histopathologic analysis of the reproductive organs and quantification of the level of xenobiotics from cetacean stranded along the Italian coastline”, produced together with the University of Siena and the University of Perugia.

Her passion for toxicology led her to collaborate for several publication with the University of Valencia (Spain).

Since 2001 she collaborated with the “Fondazione Cetacea” and the Italian Stranding Network, involved in the rehabilitation of the stranded sea turtles. Just after the graduation she did a 3 months practice by the L’Oceanographic in Valencia, again working with sea turtle and expanding her hand-on experience on the captive cetaceans medicine. She is actually a PhD student at the Veterinary School of Las Palmas de Gran Canarias, Spain, and her thesis is focused on the haematological analysis of the stranded sea turtle.

In the mean time she work also for the Wildlife Rescue Centre in Tafira, and the Marine Wildlife Rescue Centre in Taliarte, both in Las Palmas de Gran Canarias, Spain.

LETIZIA fIORUCCI

Cristina Cerulli

More info coming soon.