Elisa Granato


Elisa Teresa Granato is a molecular microbiologist in the Departments of Zoology and Biochemistry at the University of Oxford, where she researches bacterial interactions and how they evolved, including the significance of features of bacteria that contribute to disease, also known as virulence factors.
WWW elisagranato.com𝕏 Prokaryota

Early life and education

Elisa Granato was born on 23 April 1988. She earned her Bachelor of Science degree in biology from Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich, in 2011. In 2013 she received her Master of Science degree in microbiology and immunology from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and in 2017 she received her PhD from the Life Science Zurich Graduate School of the University of Zurich for a thesis supervised by Rolf Kümmerli.

Career

Granato works as a molecular microbiologist in the Departments of Zoology and Biochemistry at the University of Oxford. She researches the evolution of bacterial interactions and the significance of bacterial traits, also known as virulence factors, that contribute to a bacteria's capability of causing disease, including the siderophore pyoverdine produced by Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
On 23 April 2020, her 32nd birthday, she was the first volunteer in the Oxford vaccine trial for COVID-19. On 26 April 2020, Granato responded to circulating fake news of her death in a Twitter feed by commenting, “Nothing like waking up to a fake article on your death... I’m doing fine everyone.”

Selected publications