Mauro Rubino

Biography

I did my BSc and my PhD from 2001 to 2006 at the Second University of Naples, now università della Campania 'Luigi Vanvitelli'. I studied the carbon cycle in soil by means of isotopic methodologies at CIRCE (Centre for Isotopic Research on the Cultural and Environmental heritage). Specifically, I focused on how to measure the fluxes of carbon involved in the leaf litter decomposition process by measuring the isotopic composition of carbon in soil and leaf litter. In 2007, I moved to Aix en Provence (France) for a 18 month post-doc at INRA (Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique). There, I studied the dynamics of carbon in soil amino acids, measuring the isotopic composition of carbon at the molecular level. At the end of 2008, I was hired by the University of Copenhagen (Niels Bohr Institute, Centre for Ice and Climate) for a 3 year post-doc to study past variations of atmospheric chemical composition in ice cores. I worked on a project in collaboration with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO, Australia) and I spent most of my time working in the ICELAB and GASLAB laboratories at CSIRO (Aspendale, Melbourne). I worked on improving the precision of the protocol to extract air from ice cores and measure the concentration of trace gases (CH₄, CO₂, CO, N₂O) and the isotopic composition of CO₂. In 2012, I was hired as a Research Scientist at CSIRO for a 1 year period. After that, the Australian government decided to cut the budget for climate change related research, and in 2013 I went back to the lab (CIRCE) where I did my PhD at the Università Vanvitelli (Italy). In the last years, I have worked on a number of projects, including identification of source of nitrates in groundwater through isotopic analyses of nitrates, dating of wine samples using 14C bomb spike, etc..., but primarily I have focused on paleo-climate related projects, collaborating with my French and Danish-Australian colleagues. I have just recently (January 2018) joined the School of Geography, Geology and the Environment at Keele University as a Lecturer in Environmental Science where I will teach environmentally related courses and will deepen my research interests in the carbon cycle, climate change and the environment.

Research and scholarship

I am an isotope biogeochemist. My research activity has focused on developing isotopic methodologies to quantify the fluxes of the Global Carbon Cycle. During my PhD from 2002 to 2006, I focused on how to measure the fluxes of carbon involved in the leaf litter decomposition process, both at the ecosystem and at the molecular level. The scientific community is interested in how terrestrial ecosystems can incorporate CO₂ from the atmosphere and stabilise carbon in organic molecules. In 2004 and in 2006 I have been awarded with two grants from the European Community for research exchange visits at Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena (Germany) and at the School of Chemistry, University of Bristol (UK). During my post-doc in France in 2007-2008, I focused on a specific class of compounds of soil organic matter: amino acids. I tested a methodology to measure the d¹³C of soil amino acids and measure their residence time. Since 2009, I have produced records of atmospheric carbon-containing molecules, that have a very important role in altering the climate. I have focused on past changes of atmospheric greenhouse gases during the last centuries and millennia. I have been awarded the best poster at the IPICS (International Partnership of Ice Core Science) conference in 2016. In the same year, I have been funded $20,000 (AUD) by the CSIRO to develop the Icelab database. In 2017, I have received the habilitation in Applied Physics (Physics applied to cultural heritage, environment, biology and medicine) in the Italian Academic system and I have ranked 1st at the CNR (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche) open call for a position as a Researcher at Istituto per la dinamica dei processi ambientali (Mestre, Italy). My research experience has allowed me to write a proposal for an European Research Council Consolidator Grant (ERC-CoG) which has made it to the interview stage of the evaluation process (requested budget €1,849,644), but has not been funded (it scored B: "meets some but not all the ERC criteria...").

Teaching

Presentations