Marcella Guarino
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE AND POLICY
Universita' degli Studi di Milano
Marcella Guarino received his doctorate in Animal husbandry at University of Milan (Italy) in 1996. Since 1992 she has been facing the big problem concerning the relationship between livestock structures and the environment. Formerly she took charge of research projects focusing on the Climatization control in animal husbandry. To this purpose, she has been involved in many researches and on studying committees both at the regional and national level. In 2000 she got a grant from the National Council of Research (CNR) to develop research in the Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering of University of Minnesota – USA, under the supervision of Prof. Larry D. Jacobson. Joining the Department of Veterinary Science and Technology for Food Safety of the University of Milan in a permanent position (researcher (SSD AGR/10 - Rural buildings and landscape)she carried out her scientific activity at the Bioengineering and Environment Laboratory working on researches addressed to environmental problem, air indoor quality, and Precision livestock farming. She is a member of the Board of the Animal science Ph.D. school, and of other committees of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Milan. She coordinates a research staff of 5 people and the group research activities mainly concern on the animal welfare in relation to air quality, she was in charge of a big national project to monitor PM10, ammonia, methane and nitrose oxide from pig and poultry farms, to implement the national inventory of emissions and the study of environmental control techniques (to abate dusts gases and odors) are being studied for use on farms to increase production and improve the health and safety of the animals and workers. She is also the leader of a project sponsored by the Italian Ministry of Environment (APAT), to fill the lack of data in the European country on PM10 emission from swine and poultry barns: this study allowed establishing the development of mathematical dynamic models for the emission factor assessment. To this purpose, the research focused on the cleaning level of various materials commonly used to build walls and floors by evaluating the colonization and persistence power of some typical bacteria after washing. The experimental activity focused also on the relations between the type of building (with particular attention to the slurry removal system) and the indoor air quality. She is involved in studying the problems connected with innovation technology in livestock farming with reference both to the design aspects of the animal sheds and to their implications on the shed's indoor air quality. Afterwards, she deepened the aspects connected to the environmental impact of livestock farming by studying both gas/dust emissions in atmosphere and the reduction of nitrogen content in farm sludge to be used for the agronomic purpose. More recently she was focusing on PLF studying the application of possible innovative solutions for the automatic monitoring of the animal health and welfare conditions in livestock farming. With reference to the studies carried out on the innovation technology in livestock farming, the main aspects investigated were the methods to avoid the penetration and development of pathologies, infections and various infestations in pig farming She is the author of more than 150 papers both on National and International journals She works with several international partners and she is part of an excellence research network within the themes of PLF.