Lucia Gastoldi
Postdoctoral Associate
Affiliation: NYU Abu Dhabi
Education: PhD Universita' Politecnica delle Marche
Research Areas: Coral reef ecology; waste water in Persian Gulf, coral physiology, acclimation/adaption to extreme temperature and high nutrients conditions, acclimation/reaction to hypoxia/anoxia conditions.
Lucia Gastoldi is a Post-doctoral Associate in marine ecophysiology at the Water Research Center at New York University Abu Dhabi, under the supervision of John Burt. She holds a BSc in Biological Science from the University of Milan (UNIMI – Italy), a two-year MSc in Marine Biology from Polytechnic University of Marche (UNIVPM – Italy), and a three-year PhD from the same university, in Marine Biology and Ecology.
Gastoldi focuses on the Arabian Gulf marine environment to understand how organisms, particularly corals, can cope with both extreme environmental conditions and anthropogenic stressors. In particular, she is interested in the management of wastewater in the Persian Gulf and in how consequent nutrient enrichment, coupled with reduced dissolved oxygen, can influence the physiology and ecology of the hard-coral species in the Gulf.
During her PhD, Gastoldi investigated the physiological implications that altered environments could have on cyanobacteria metabolism, underlying the variation in the sulfur metabolic pathway. In her dissertation, she analyzed how variations in nutrients (nitrogen and sulfur in particular) and O2/CO2 ratio in the atmosphere influence growth and metabolism of cyanobacteria species, underling how results can help endorse some cyanobacteria evolution theories over others.
Previous to her PhD, Gastoldi worked as an intern in Asia. In 2015, she was selected for the Campus World Scholarship, which allowed her to work on the cnidarian/algae symbiosis in Taiwan at the National Museum and Marine Aquarium. The year after, she was awarded of one scholarship in Saudi Arabia at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).
Current Research
Gastoldi focuses on the Arabian Gulf marine environment to understand how organisms, particularly corals, can cope with both extreme environmental conditions and anthropogenic stressors. In particular, she is interest in the management of the waste water in the Persian Gulf and in how consequent nutrients enrichment, coupled with reduced dissolved oxygen, can influence the physiology and the ecology of the hard-coral species in the Gulf.