Valerio Zupo grew up as a marine biologist at the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, in a very fertile scientific environment corroborated by the presence of eminent scientists like R. Riedl, J. Romero, E. Fresi and L. Mazzella. His love for benthic ecology studies increased during a Fullbright fellowship at the Florida Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. at the University of Bruxelles. He cooperated with various institutes and centres in the world, from the Office of Naval Research (USA) to the University of Zurich, the Ben Gurion University in Israel, the University of Koeln in Germany, the University of Tasmania, the U.S. EPA, the UERJ in Brazil, the University of Barcelona in Spain, the Aix-Marseille University in France and many others, through a splendid scientific network that still produces plenty of exciting publications. He was a contract teacher for a course in Management of Marine Resources at the University Federico II of Naples (Italy) and served as a Unit Head at the Stazione Zoologica, for the production of model organisms for the scientific research. Dr. Zupo is a professional journalist and has published several books and hundreds of articles on various scientific topics, as well as for science dissemination. He is presently president of the International Society for Invertebrate Reproduction and Development (ISIRD) and has met various Nobel laureates during his career, providing motivation and hints, from Konrad Lorenz in Altenberg to Martin Chalfie and Tim Hunt that enriched the congress he organized in Italy, dedicated to the life rhythms of invertebrates. Presently, he is a researcher at the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn of Naples and is associated with the department of eco-sustainable biotechnology. The passion of his life is a protandric shrimp exhibiting remarkable physiologic peculiarities, but his research spans from theoretical ecology to biodiversity issues, culture of sea urchins, global changes, ocean acidification, ecological modeling, chemical ecology, seagrass biology and aquaculture.
