Rodolfo Costa is a Senior Associate at the Neuroscience Institute of the Italian National Research Council (CNR) and former Chair of Genetics at the University of Padova, Italy. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Section of Chronobiology, University of Surrey, UK.
His research focuses on the neurogenetic, molecular, and physiological analysis of the circadian clock, with particular interest in the genes and molecular mechanisms regulating the endogenous clock, their function, and their evolution. More recently, his work has expanded to human chronobiology, investigating the phenotypical correlates of clock gene polymorphisms and contributing to the development of tools to study and manage circadian sleep-wake disorders. In the field of functional genetics, he has used Drosophila melanogaster as a model to study orthologs of previously uncharacterized human genes involved in mitochondrial diseases.
His research has been funded by the European Union, the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, EMBO, NATO, the Italian Space Agency, and Telethon. This is his third successful application to a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network, and he has already supervised two MSCA PhD students to completion.