I am Alessandro Riva, a master student from the University of Milan, Italy. Since High School I was very interested in chemistry and toxicology, so I attended the Bachelor Degree course in “Chemical-Toxicological Sciences and Safety of the Environment” (now called “Toxicology for Human and Environmental Safety”) at the “Università degli Studi di Milano”, where I graduated in February 2023. The title of my thesis was “Development and validation of a HS-GC/MS method for the quantitative determination of terpenes in Therapeutic Cannabis oleolites”.
After graduation, I worked for six months in the Chemical-Toxicological Analysis Laboratory at the University of Milan. During this period, I carried out quali-quantitative analyses in GC/FID, GC/MS and HPLC/UV in order to establish the identity of the drugs present in the material subjected to judicial seizure by the Financial Police of Malpensa airport. In particular, I monitored the presence of new psychoactive substances (NPS) on the clandestine market.
In September 2023 I enrolled in the Master Degree in “Safety Assessment of Xenobiotics and Biotechnological Products”, always at the “Università degli Studi di Milano”, which I currently attend.
During these studies I carried out a collaboration with the University: I tutored high school students in the laboratory activities in biological-biotechnological field, like PCR, electrophoresis, DNA and RNA extraction and Elisa test.
As my experience so far has been in analytical chemistry and biology-biotechnology, I am interested in deepening pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety to improve my knowledge in these fields. For this reason, I decided to apply for this internship at the University of Oslo.
During my stay I am going to work on a project entitled: "Effect of antidepressant exposure during the early life-course on intensity and timing of pubertal growth in children". I am happy to work in the PharmaSafe group on this research field and I am sure that this experience in an international environment will be very important for my studies, for my professional future and also for my personal development.