LR (Laura) Righetti

Dr. Laura Righetti is Assistant Professor in Analytical Chemistry at Wageningen University and Research. She joined the Laboratory of Organic Chemistry and Wageningen Food Safety Research in 2022 as recipient of the WGS Postdoc Talent Programme 2022.

She holds a MSc degree in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technology at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia and completed her PhD degree in Food Chemistry at the University of Parma on the applicability of high-end analytical chemistry tools to assess quality, authenticity, and safety of wheat.

She has been working in mass spectrometry-based metabolomics since her Master thesis in the framework of the Erasmus program at the Centre for Metabolomics and Bioanalysis in Madrid. During her doctoral studies, Laura visited Prof. Jana Hajsolva lab at the University of Chemistry and Technology (Prague) for one year. This enabled her to make significant contributions in bringing innovation in the field of natural toxins, by providing new solutions to old problems, such as the elucidation of modified mycotoxins, using ion mobility mass spectrometry.

The postdoc research at the University of Parma was focused on the development of high-resolution mass spectrometry methods to elucidate the biotransformation of natural toxins. Laura Righetti led her first project in 2019, a postdoctoral contract funded by DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service-Founding) conducted at the Justus Liebig University (Giessen), which aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of the spatial compartmentalization of mycotoxins in plants using imaging mass spectrometry.

Her main research interest is to apply high end mass spectrometry tools (such as Ion Mobility and Imaging MS) in the omics domain to investigate the effect of multiple contaminants on edible plants.