Donato Giovannelli is an Assistant Professor of microbiology at the University of Naples Federico II, Italy, a ERC Starting Grant holder and an affiliated scientist at the Earth-Life Science Institute in Tokyo and Rutgers University, USA. His research aims to explore and understand the emergence and evolution of life and the co-evolution of the Geosphere and the Biosphere. To this end his group combines classic microbiology techniques with fieldwork and computational tools to reconstruct geo-bio interactions. The majority of their work is carried out in extreme environments, ranging from deep-sea and shallow-water hydrothermal vents, hot springs and volcanoes, the subsurface and Antarctica.