Laura Selbmann has devoted her professional life to study the Antarctic cryptoendolithic microbial communities, life-forms spreading at the edge for life, as model systems to investigate the evolution and adaptation throughout extremes, and explore them as early alarm systems for monitoring the effect of climate change.

 

Laura Selbmann MSc degree in Biology in University of Rome "La Sapienza", PhD in Biological and Biochemical Evolution, University of Tuscia (UNITUS), Italy.

In 2002 she has attended the course of General Mycology and in 2014 ine Medical Mycology with final examination, Westerdijk Institute (Fungal Biodiversity Centre), The Netherlands and in 2018 the Physalia course in metagenomics, Berlin, Germany.

From 2004 to 2012 regular Guest at the Westerdijk Institute, Utrecht, NL under the direct supervision of Prof. G. Sybren de Hoog, main expert on phylogeny and evolution of environmental and medical black fungi.

From 2000 to 2006 Postdoc on biodiversity of Antarctic endolithic communities, DEB, University of Tuscia.

From 2006 to 2015 Senior Researcher on Botany, DEB, UNITUS. From 2015 Associate Professor of Botany and Mycology, Department of Ecological and Biological Sciences (DEB), UNITUS.

From 2009 scientific responsible for the preservation, scientific valorization, divulgation of collections of the Italian Antarctic National Museum (MNA), Mycological Section, Genoa, Italy.  

The Culture Collection of Fungi From Extreme Environments (CCFEE, from extreme environments worldwide and MNA-CCFEE, from Antarctica) include together about 1700 fungal strains, most of which are black meristematic fungi, the majority of which are from rocks. These collections are unique in the world, hosting cultures of inestimable value for the logistic and economic efforts paid to recover them. Over more than 20 years of research focussed of phylogeny, ecology, evolution and stress adaptation of Antarctic rock black fungi and endolithic microbial communities, the working-group coordinated by Laura Selbmann represents a landmark in this field.

She is Principal Investigator of Antarctic Projects funded by the Italian National Program for Antarctic Researches (PNRA).

​She also led one small and two large scale US Department of Energy (DOE) JGI's Community Science Program (CSP) projects (US) in the last three years.