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Agnese Cimaroli

Agnese Cimaroli's picture

Ph.D. candidate in Ingegneria Civile E Ambientale , 41st cycle (2025-2028)
Department of Environment, Land and Infrastructure Engineering (DIATI)

Profile

PhD

Research topic

The role of climate in the emergence and spread of bat-borne zoonotic infectious diseases.

Tutors

Keywords

Numerical Modelling and Simulation

Biography

Agnese Cimaroli is a PhD candidate at the Department of Environment, Land and Infrastructure Engineering of the Politecnico di Torino. She holds an MSc in Environmental and Land Engineering, specialising in Climate Change, from the same university. Before starting her PhD, she was a visiting researcher at the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics (CIDD) at Pennsylvania State University.

Her research focuses on climate change and short-term climate variability, including extremes, with particular attention to their effects on environmental processes and human health. She is especially interested in how climate may influence the emergence and spread of zoonotic diseases, specifically the transmission of pathogens with pandemic potential from bats to humans. Her work combines climate science with ecological and epidemiological perspectives to identify the environmental conditions that may precede spillover events, when pathogens cross from wildlife to humans.

The ultimate goal of her research is to investigate whether climate can provide early warning signals of zoonotic spillover, helping anticipate and prevent outbreaks before they become a global health threat.

Awards and Honors

  • Rigatelli Award (2025 edition). Award for the most innovative Master’s thesis at Politecnico di Torino addressing climate change-related topics. The award is funded by the Piedmont Region and promoted by the Department of Environment, Land and Infrastructure Engineering (DIATI). (2025)