MSCA PF Fellow: Allyson Viganò

Allyson Viganò earned her degree in Natural Sciences and her PhD in Earth Sciences (2022) from the University of Padua, where she conducted her doctoral research at the Department of Geosciences. She is a micropalaeontologist and palaeoceanographer specialised in calcareous nannofossils (fossil coccolithophore algae). During her PhD, she investigated calcareous nannofossils as recorders of past oceanographic and climatic conditions, with a particular focus on the Eocene–Oligocene transition, a major Cenozoic climate shift marked by the onset of Antarctic glaciation. Her research combined quantitative micropalaeontology, biostratigraphy, and stable isotope geochemistry to reconstruct past oceanographic conditions and carbon cycle dynamics from marine sediment cores. From 2023 to 2025, she worked as a research fellow on the INDICATOR project within the RETURN Extended Partnership (Spoke DS8) at the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering (DICEA), University of Padua, contributing to the development of a palaeoclimate database based on Mediterranean marine sediment cores spanning the last 20,000 years.

As an MSCA Postdoctoral Fellow, she will work on the COCO-PRO project under the supervision of Prof. Claudia Agnini (University of Padua) and Dr. Jean Self-Trail (USGS), focusing on quantifying species-specific carbonate production by calcareous nannofossils during the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) to better constrain marine carbonate fluxes and long-term carbon storage during extreme global warming events.