Dr Carla Cervini

Areas of expertise

• Agrifood Systems
• Food Safety

Background

In 2012, she obtained a BSc in Nutritional Biology at the University of Camerino (Italy) and in 2016 she got a MSc in Human Nutrition at the University of Rome Tor Vergata (Italy) both with honour. For the MSc thesis, she spent six months at the Cereal Research Centre (Italy) where she worked on pigmented Italian cereals to analyse their different anthocyanins content for possible application in wheat-derived products.  

As a MSc student she enriched her student career with experiences abroad. In 2014, she won a scholarship with the Erasmus exchange programme to study at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain); in 2016, she won a scholarship with the Erasmus traineeship programme as research assistant at the University of Leeds for six months. During this period she worked on a project whose goal was to compare protein types and content of different ancient Italian wheat cultivars. 

In March 2020, she obtained her PhD in  Translational Medicine and Food: Innovation, Safety and Management at the Institute of Science of Food Production of the National Research Council in Bari (Italy) while registered at the University of Foggia (Italy). During her PhD she worked on a project about the effect of possible climate change scenarios on the ecophysiological behaviour of Aspergillus carbonarius in the South Italy wine production chain. As a PhD researcher, in 2018 she joined the Applied Mycology Group at Cranfield University where she gained additional skills on fungal growth and incubation in in vitro system to simulate climate change scenarios. 

Research opportunities

I am open to new collaboration on nutrition and applied food mycology. 

Current activities

In 2020, she joined the Applied Mycology Group at Cranfield University as Research Fellow. 

Since September 2020 to January 2023, she worked on  "NutriNuts - mitigation of aflatoxin occurrence in Ethiopian peanuts used in therapeutic food products to reduce malnutrition in Africa" funded by UKRI (Innovate UK).  Currently her main ongoing project is "EWA belt: linking East and West African farming systems experience into a belt of sustainable intensification" funded by EU Horizon 2020. 

Her expertise are: 

• Ecophysiology and molecular ecology of mycotoxigenic fungi in food production chains.
• Impact of climate change factors on main food spoilage fungi.
• Mitigation strategies to control mycotoxin occurrence in developed and developing countries.
• Microscopic fungal imaging. 
• Impact of mycotoxin contamination on the nutritional profile of food products. 

Publications

• Articles in journals