Erika is an industrial biotechnologist who graduated at the University of Bologna. She has conducted research both in Italy and abroad, focusing on optimizing anaerobic digestion processes and biomass pre-treatments, with experience at the Centro de Engenharia Biológica in Portugal and the Instituto de la Grasa in Spain. From 2019 to 2023, Erika worked at a research center in Italy named CRPA, collaborating with the private sector to provide biological support to full-scale biogas plants and conducting feasibility studies. She also contributed to public sector projects aimed at integrating anaerobic digestion in biorefineries, optimizing the anaerobic digestion process, evaluating the fertilizing power of digestate and exploring diverse applications. Erika is an active participant in the COST Action WIRE on waste biorefinery yechnologies and, since 2022, she is part of the Italian Composting Consortium (CIC). Currently, she is the DC9 of the INCLUE project, where her research focuses on characterizing and comparing sludge-derived fertilizer products, with an emphasis on their quality and safety for agricultural use at INRAE.