Emiliano Ventura

Emiliano graduated in March 2013 with a first class honours degree in Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Technology at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” (Italy). He spent seventeen months in Rome’s anti-doping laboratory while working on his MSc project in the field of analysis of drugs and their metabolites in human urine, utilising gas chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS). His project aimed to develop and validate a new analytical screening method for the detection of 135 banned doping substances.

He was awarded a “Leonardo da Vinci” placement at the Noopolis Foundation, under the “Project Unipharma Graduates 9”. Thanks to this opportunity, he started a six-month internship in Basel in October 2013 at the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland, Institute of Ecopreneurship (FHNW). During the two years he spent in Basel, he also embarked on other exciting work experiences. He was recruited in August 2014 by Novartis Pharma AG to work in the Strategy and Communication Department as the Text Data Miner for internal SOPs classification. He completed his experience in Switzerland working as the Drug Safety Junior Assistant in SaPhar GmbH located in Oberwill (November 2014-March 2015).

Although he has embarked on several exciting work experience projects, he still wanted to continue with his studies in academia and become a qualified scientist. He obtained a PhD position as Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher at Queen’s University Belfast (Northern Ireland). He started his PhD in August 2015, and his research focused on the development and validation of UHPLC-MS/MS methods for the analysis of SARM residues, which may be abused in the future in human and animal sports and food-producing animals, respectively. At the end of the three years PhD, a range of analytical methodologies will be developed to provide screening of SARM compounds in a range of biological matrices of different origin (e.g. urine and blood) from equine, canine, bovine and rodent animals, as well as in human. Analytical tools will enable high throughput and simultaneous detection of a panel of SARM analytes by UHPLC-MS/MS-platforms. Validation of both screening and confirmatory analytical methods will be carried out according to the EU Commission Decision 2002/57/EC and CRL 2010 guidelines, respectively. The analytical methods will be extensively evaluated through application to a range of real samples.