👤 About
Hi! I'm Nicolas and welcome to my site.Let me present myself: I'm an Italian 28-year-old whose aim is to accomplish remarkable things in the ageing and longevity field, ultimately trying to catalyse a pivotal change in how we experience our journey on this flying grain of sand. This will be accomplished with the help of my grit, ambition and unabating work ethic forever chasing improvement in myself and in all my present and future travel buddies.
💭 interests
I simply love life and I want to extend this journey as much as possible. To me, a good life is defined by the function of its length and its enjoyability, and I find optimal health to be a major stakeholder when it comes to both. This idea renders me interested in basically any strategy, practice, molecule or piece of information that could help prevent (or revert) the appearance of age-related phenotypes while also optimizing human health beyond what is presently considered "normal".On the side, I like to talk about human psychology and (absurd?) behaviours, morality, politics (!), new technologies, anime and videogames!
🔬 current work
Formal academic education
The closest, more affirmed branch of medical science that interests me and the one I decided to get a degree in, is nutrition as I find it to be the most interesting "big rock". Therefore, after a Bachelor's in biology at the University of Camerino and an Erasmus+ for study at Ulster University. In June 2024, I graduated from a two-year master's degree in Nutrition Science at the Karolinska Institute. (check my full CV below to know my path).Alongside my academic education, I have extracurricularly studied extensively all the topics on which lifestyle and preventive medicine are based, such as nutrition science but also exercise and sleep science.
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Scientific research
In 2021 with my Bachelor thesis, I started to work, first at the University of Copenhagen, then at the Karolinska Institute, followed by the University of Cambridge in the molecular physiology research field, specifically in basic metabolic research investigating potential therapeutic targets for cardiometabolic diseases such as diabetes and obesityAt the moment, I'm a RA in the Sabatini Lab at the IOCB and I work mainly in Prague but soon also in Boston. Here I started to shift my research more towards ageing and longevity to match my clinical interests working on a drug discovery project on upstream regulators of mTOR. (check my full CV below to know my scientific experience and output).
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Other pursues
Having the power to massively impact the health of people only with the use of some knowledge enlightens me. This has led to the initiation of a side hustle in the health consulting sector, where I basically apply lifestyle/preventive medicine principles to make people live a longer, healthier, more fulfilling life.I also volunteer as a reviewer for the journal Lifestyle Medicine and I work as a writer for the Italian Nutrition and Functional Medicine school.In the future, I will immerse myself further in the longevity biotech space, determined to soon start my own venture in this field.
🔗 links
ℹ️ Recent Updates
"Hot off the press, the paper on which I collaborated during my time in Stockholm at the Karolinska Institutet, in the lab of Anna Krook and Juleen R. Zierath on the role of creatine metabolism in type 2 diabetes is finally published in Science Translational Medicine!
Thank you to the whole" // ... continues on Linkedin
10th October 2024
"Recently, I joined Manuel Salvadori on his podcast and we interviewed my current PI, David M. Sabatini.
David is a leading voice and one of the discoverers of mTOR, one of the most promising targets for longevity research and anti-ageing interventions. In this episode, we discuss:" // ....... continues on Linkedin
23rd September 2024
"Time for a new chapter! After graduating a couple of weeks ago I now moved to Prague where I will be working in the newly established Sabatini's Lab at the IOCB Prague - Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
Here I will be finally shifting my
" //... continues on Linkedin
11th June 2024
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📲 let's connect
If you believe I could advise you in your academic career.
If you want to submit a professional enquiry.
If you want to propose any kind of collaboration.
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August 2015
High School Diploma
Finished high school as a nerd outcaster disinterested kid, with bad grades, overweight with confidence issues, none that I could consider a real friend and with a lot of anger accumulated and fermenting inside me for various reasons, convinced that I was a good for nothing.This one on the right is really a perfect depiction of my mood at the time, if you know about the anime Naruto you will understand.
The only thing that I could care about (a lot) were MMORPG videogames. I was extremely successful, competitive, dedicated, ambitious, thoughtful, strategic and analytic in growing my character in virtual realities ONLY.
October 2015
Started and failed in Uni
Even though I was completely clueless about what to do with my life and dubious about going forward with academia, pushed by the common narrative that continuing into Uni was the path that everyone should have followed, I started a bachelor's in economics in a place near by. Funnily enough, I picked economics because I didn't want to touch any scientific subject anymore in my life.Needless to say that I didn't like it, I didn't do well in the first exams, I was not motivated, and decided to not kid each others and give up, convinced that I would have never ever again had to do with a University.
April 2016
Started to work
For 3 years after quitting Uni, thanks to my dad's acquaintances I worked multiple "good" jobs, but I was not happy with my situation.Talking with other people about my occupations was not making me proud, even though they were completely respectable. I then realized this was nothing but my (at the time buried) ambitious side ruminating in my head.
From 2016
Developed interest in fitness
During a very depressive period following a heartbreak, I started to workout in the gym. Moved by my perfectionist and optimising mindset developed on strategic videogames, I quickly began to study on a deep level the topics of exercise science and sports nutrition. For the first time, I was actually interested in something that was not a videogame and felt like I should have improved my character in the real life as well.During this period, I also started coaching friends and family members, which I'll continue doing sporadically in the future.
March 2018
What I like to call my turning point
After visiting a nutritionist because my father thought my whey proteins were anabolic steroids, where the nutritionist basically told me only things that I had learned already myself, I realized I could have done that easy and remunerative job as well, especially because it was so well-aligned with my interests at the time.Seeing that "good" professional doing something that I could have easily done already myself, sparked a light in me that had never been ON before.
October 2018
Start of my bachelor
That winter I quitted my job and signed up again at a local university (still convinced I was somewhat retarded. My mood was: "Maybe this time I can do this if I really try hard").My hope was to just get the bare minimum grades that would have allowed me to get the piece of paper (degree) that would have allowed to legally practice as a registered dietitian.
January 2020
Realized I was not too bad
After a year and a half of very unexpected successes where I was acing every exam effortlessly while hundreds of students were failing or struggling, I realized I was not retarded and that I was just disinterested during high school. I also felt that if I was keen on putting in the effort and learning how to harness my attention and interest, I could have been capable of big things.During this period, my interest shifted away from the fitness niche to clinical nutrition, biohacking, sleep science, ending up in the broad lifestyle/preventive medicine area.
January 2021
First "Erasmus"
All of a sudden I was a good student at my university. A very surprising position to be in! In my mind good students were those spending a period abroad; that's why I decided to apply for an Erasmus+ grant that would have allowed me to give exams outbound. I won it, but unfortunately, covid didn't allow me to depart physically. I ended up sustaining exams at the Ulster University from home.
I still had the chance to witness a new teaching method during this time.
October 2021
Second Erasmus - BSc thesis
Not happy with how the first Erasmus went, I decided to apply a second time to the Erasmus+ grant, this time to do my bachelor thesis abroad. I won, and I managed after discouraging hurdles without any help whatsoever from anyone, to find myself a place at the University of Copenhagen in one of the best departments in exercise science, nutrition and metabolism in the world.This was my first actual long period of time abroad by myself. During this time I met beautiful people and also got to know what the life of a researcher looked like.
April 2022
Bachelor graduation
After returning from Copenhagen, I graduated with the highest grade, more than 200 ECTS and a publication under my name, something no other bachelor student in my programme had ever done before.At this point the "dietitian" job was not an option anymore, I felt like I could and should have aimed much higher. So high that I should have been able to not only provide for my closest ones but also for many more people.
August 2022
Start of my master
Following these believes, I applied for my master's at the Karolinska Institute and got accepted. During this time, to maximize the return on the (time) investment, I voluntarily further practised metabolic research in a very prestigious lab, earned my name in my second publication which ended up on a Science journal and met a lot more nice people.
September 2023
Third Erasmus - MSc thesis
For my master's thesis, I picked the Institute of Metabolic Science at the University of Cambridge. During the 9 months spent there, I've had the chance to do science and learn a lot alongside the brightest in the field, I've attended conferences and seminars monthly by luminaries or Nobel Prizes and I've experienced the student life at its fullest, meeting new friends and like-minded people daily while improving areas of my character that were previously underdeveloped.
During this time I decided for various reasons to move away from the basic metabolic research field towards the ageing, longevity and rejuvenation one.From now on, I will dedicate the rest of my life to either figuring out how not to die myself or contributing so much to the cause to remain forever alive in history, resonating with Nietzsche when he said: "I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible".
June 2024
Shift towards Longevity Research
Realising that I should have narrowed down to a pathway to do research on ageing and to find potential therapeutics on which to base a company, I decided to focus on one of the most promising, the mTOR pathway. Luckily for me, the world's leading expert on mTOR, David Sabatini, had recently relocated from MIT to Prague.This made me relocate to the Czech Republic to do what I initially thought would have been only a 3 months internship, but which then turned out to become a year-long drug discovery project on upstream, nutrient-sensing regulators of mTOR.
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