Mattia Poletto was appointed Oxitec’s Molecular Team Lead in 2019 and is now Program Lead for the  Asian blue tick project as well as other projects dealing with a variety of agricultural pests. He holds over 10 years’ experience as a molecular biologist, with a career focused on DNA integrity, translational research, and genetic engineering. As an experienced program manager, Mattia is in charge of starting up novel projects, onboarding new pests and leading the early implementation stages of new programs. His main focus is currently implementing Oxitec’s self-limiting technology in Oxitec’s first non-insect: the Asian blue tick.

Mattia joined Oxitec in 2017 and focused on developing and characterizing self-limiting products in a range of agricultural crop pests. He contributed to Oxitec’s regulatory approval for the Florida field trials with Oxitec’s Friendly™ Aedes aegypti product (OX5034) and gained valuable experience as a key member of the molecular biology team, before guiding the team through the strain characterization work that supported regulatory approval of Oxitec’s self-limiting fall armyworm in Brazil and elsewhere. More recently, Mattia supported the establishment of a tick-focused team in Roslin, launching Oxitec’s first R&D outpost in Scotland.

Mattia lives in Italy with his family and enjoys trail running in his spare time.