Today is the last (official) day in the lab for Ciro Bonetti (aka Ciruzzo), one of our senior postdocs. Ciro is leaving to begin a new and exciting adventure at Regeneron. To say that Ciro will be missed is a big understatement and while we are happy for him, he leaves a hole that will be very difficult to fill.
Ciro begun his scientific career in the beautiful city of Naples and, as many Italian aspiring scientists do, came to the US for his postdoctoral training. We have been incredibly lucky to have him in the lab; during the past six years Ciro contributed to many exciting projects. He was the first to work on lncRNAs in our lab, and thanks to his results we were able to obtain NIH funding. As part of this work he generated four different genetically engineered mouse strains, whose characterization will keep us busy for years to come.
Together with Joana (another postdoc that soon will start her independent career), Ciro also lead an exciting project on improving CRISPR-based gene replacement efficiency. This work is nearing completion and hopefully you will hear more about it in the not so distant future on this blog!
In addition to his remarkable scientific accomplishments, Ciro has been a generous and friendly lab member, an outstanding volleyball player, an assiduous concert goer, and a truly nice guy. The sadness of seeing him leave is attenuated by the fact that Ciro will remain in NYC, and we are sure he will not forget his friends and colleagues here at MSKCC.
Ad majora, Ciruzzo!
The Ventura Lab 