Alessandro Massolo

Dr. Massolo has got his undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences at the University of Pisa (IT), where he also completed his Master of Science in Animal Biology and Behaviour in 1994, working on modelling the occurrence of wolves in the northern Apennines (Italy). In 2000, he then took his PhD at the University of Siena (IT) in Animal Biology (Zoology) on the behavioural ecology of the crested porcupine, and then he spent 4 years as post DOC at the University of Florence.
After his post-DOC, he served as sessional professor in various Universities across Italy until 2008, when he joined the Department of Ecosystem and Public Health at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada) as faculty member in Wildlife Health Ecology. At UofC he founded the Wildlife Ecology and Spatial Epidemiology Lab (WEASEL) with a wildlife biology wet lab and a GIS lab. He also co-founded the interdisciplinary Wildlife Disease Ecology Group (iWEG) at the University of Calgary for the promotion of interdisciplinary research and teaching. In 2016, he has been the Chair of the Wildlife Health Ecology research group at UCVM.
Since January 2017 he is Associate professor at the University of Pisa, Italy, where he joined the Ethology Unit at the Department of Biology, but maintained a connection with UofC as an adjunct Professor in Wildlife Health Ecology in the faculties of Veterinary Medicine and of Environmental Design. He is also adjunct at the School for Public Health of the University of Alberta, Canada and Associate Researcher at the UMR CNRS 6249 Chrono-environnement, Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté, Besancon, France.
His research interests are mostly on the ecology of complex systems with a particular focus on terrestrial ecosystems, using biostatistics, and ecological and mathematical modelling, but his research spanned from Ecology and Behavioural ecology, Wildlife management and conservation, to physiology, applied Mathematics, Information Technologies, and allergology.
His current main research program focuses on the ecology and dynamics of complex systems, focusing on multi-scale spatial and temporal heterogeneity of ecological processes and patterns in prey-predator and hosts-parasite interactions, as well as of epidemiological processes.
Currently, he is coordinating the following research projects:
a) Ecological interactions affecting gastrointestinal parasites transmission at different spatial scales: the case of the European strain of Echinococcus multilocularis in North America;
b) Dynamics of Echinococcus multilocularis transmission in Italy at the edge of its European distribution;
c) The effect of climate and land use changes in species distribution: Echinococcus spp distribution at continental and global scales;
d) Terrestrial communities: top-down and bottom-up effects at different spatial scales.
In his current position (UNIPI), he teaches ‘Biostatistics’, ‘Advanced Biostatistics’, and ‘Behavioural Ecology’. Previously, he has taught Principles and Advanced Biostatistics in undergraduate and graduate programs since 1995, and General Biology and Ecological Statistics at undergraduate level. At the Univ. of Calgary, he taught Spatial analysis in Ecology and Epidemiology, Research Design, One-Health and one course on Ecosystem and Public Health.
His laboratory welcomes undergraduate and graduate students from all over the world, and hosts visiting scholars within international research collaborations. So far, he supervised independent and honours projects for about 60 undergraduate students and supervised or co-supervised 45 national and international graduate students.
He has authored and co-authored more than 115 indexed publications and 8 book chapters. Since in a permanent position (2009), he has been awarded as main PI or co-PI/Applicant more than 730,000€ in research funding.