FEM

Partner 35 – Fondazione Edmund Mach (FEM)

FEM, Trento, Italy. The Edmund Mach Foundation (FEM) is a private, non-profit institute of the Autonomous Province of Trento, established in 2005 by the merging the Istituto Agrario di S. Michele all’Adige (www.iasma.it) and the Centro di Ecologia Alpina (www.cealp.it). The mission of the FEM Research and Innovation Centre (CRI) is to promote Trentino’s land-based economy through research and innovation in the fields of agriculture, food quality and safety, and environment and natural resources. Research activities in the latter area focus on human-mediated and natural processes affecting mountain ecosystem functions and services under global change scenarios. A strong interdisciplinary approach is promoted, which combines theoretical and empirical research from the smallest (nucleotide) to the highest (GIS and remote sensing) scale, and integrates basic ecological research and environmental monitoring using modelling and scenario analysis. Research in ecology and epidemiology focusses on emerging zoonotic diseases and host- parasite interactions in natural populations, with special emphasis on understanding the impact of global change on the risk of spread and introduction of new and emerging pathogens into wild and human populations inhabiting European alpine ecosystems. During the 6th Framework program, the group was a core partner of the Integrated Project of the European Community “EDEN” (Emerging Diseases in a Changing European Environment: http://www.eden-fp6project.net/) within the subproject “Tick Borne Diseases and Rodent Borne Diseases”.

FEM has extensive experience with intensive tick collection from small mammals and game animals, molecular identification and analyses of pathogens, population genetics of a variety of animal species, and remote sensing and epidemiological modelling, as illustrated by expertise of team members and publication list. The team is supported by a number of very experienced field and laboratory technicians (V Tagliapietra, F Rossi, D Arnoldi, M Girardi).

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