**About the Editors**

**Giovanna Riccardi** 1976—Master Degree cum laude in Biology. 1977–1984—Fellowships aimed to work in Microbiology fields, at the Institute of Microbiology and Plant Physiology, University of Pavia; 1979—EMBO Short-Term fellowship, University of Liverpool (UK); 1984–1998—Researcher at the Department of Genetics and Microbiology, University of Pavia; 1999–2002—Associate Professor of Microbiology at the Department of Experimental, Environmental and Applied Biology, University of Genoa; Since October 2002—Full Professor of Microbiology, at the Department of Genetics and Microbiology (now Department of Biology and Biotechnology), University of Pavia; From January 2010 to December 2012—President of the SIMGBM (Italian Society of General Microbiology and Microbial Biotechnologies); Since August 2011—Member of the European Academy of Microbiology; The two main lines of research she is currently pursuing are:

(1) RESISTANCE MECHANISMS AND TARGET IDENTIFICATION OF NEW DRUGS FOR Mycobacterium tuberculosis;

(2) IDENTIFICATION OF NEW DRUGS AND NEW TARGETS FOR Burkholderia cenocepacia.

FUNDING—Prof. G. Riccardi has obtained several grants from different sources: WHO; CNR-Bilateral Project; CNR-RAISA; MURST 40%; MURST-PRIN-1998, 2001, 2003, 2008; 2017; EC-V, VI and -VII frameworks; Istituto Superiore di Sanita, Fondazione Fibrosi Cistica 2004, 2006, ` 2009, 2012, 2015. Cystic Fibrosis Foundation-USA 2017. Regarding the EC grants, she was always part of the steering committee. She is the author of several peer-reviewed articles, four book chapters, two International Patent Applications and several national and international communications. H-index Google Scholar: 42. Citations Google Scholar: 6099.

**Claudia Sala**, PhD. Claudia Sala trained as a molecular microbiologist in the laboratory of Prof. Daniela Ghisotti, at the University of Milan (Italy), where she obtained her degree in Biological Sciences in 2000 and a PhD degree in Genetics and Molecular Biology in 2003. Her PhD thesis dealt with the transcriptional regulation of the furA and katG genes in mycobacteria in response to oxidative stress. In the framework of the EU FP6 "New Medicines for Tuberculosis" (NM4TB) and FP7 "More Medicines for Tuberculosis" (MM4TB), she worked as a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratories of Prof. Stewart Cole, first at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and then at the Ecole Polytechnique Fed´ erale de Lausanne, where she was subsequently promoted to senior scientist. She ´ took active part in several research projects, including functional genomics and investigations on the M. tuberculosis Type VII Secretion System, and established the ChIP-Seq and RNA-Seq technologies in M. tuberculosis. She obtained the certificate of Biosafety Level 3 (BSL3) Safety Officer from the Swiss Confederation as well as the FESALA Category B and Category C licenses for performing and directing experiments involving animals. She was the recipient of the Swiss TB Award in 2010. She has recently moved to the Fondazione Toscana Life Sciences (TLS) in Siena, in the group led by Prof. Rino Rappuoli, and performs research on monoclonal antibodies and vaccine development. Her main interests include drug discovery against infectious diseases, vaccinology, host–pathogen interaction and biosafety.
