Francesco Di SerioFrancesco Di Serio PhD is Research Director at the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Istituto per la Protezione Sostenibile delle Piante (IPSP), SS Bari, Italy. He obtained his PhD degree in Plant Virology at the University of Naples FedericoII. His PhD and early postdoctoral research focused on viroids' characterization in the laboratory directed by Prof. Ricardo Flores (CSIC-Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain). His second postdoc was carried out in the laboratory directed by Prof. Frederick Meins (Friedrich Miescher Institute, Basel, Switzerland), where he studied RNA silencing and virus movement in tobacco. Currently, Dr.. Di Serio is a Member and Vice-Chair of the Plant Health Panel of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). He is Member of Accademico aggregato) of the Georgofili Accademy. Since 2011, he has chaired the Viroid Study Group of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses. In 2014, F. Di Serio obtained the Italian National Scientific Habilitation as a full professor in Plant Pathology and Entomology. He has more than 25 years of teaching and research experience in viroid characterization, taxonomy, characterization of novel viroid-like RNAs and viruses and has published in a hundred research articles in refereed journals. Read More Read Less