Rate My Professor Mattia Sacco

Dr Mattia Sacco serves as a Lecturer in the School of Molecular and Life Sciences within the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Curtin University, Perth, Australia. He completed his Doctor of Philosophy in Ecology at Curtin University in 2020, with a thesis entitled "Functional ecology of calcrete aquifers in arid zone Western Australia," employing isotopic and molecular techniques to investigate subterranean biota dynamics. He previously earned a degree in Biology in 2014 and a degree in Ecology in 2011 from the University of Valencia, Spain. After his PhD, Sacco held a postdoctoral fellowship at Curtin University from July 2020 to April 2021, leading the project "Functional ecology of Chilean precordillera lakes: towards a Wetland Health Index for birds." Earlier, from 2014 to 2016, he served as Senior Researcher and Researcher at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Department of Hydraulic Engineering and Environment and Department of Electrical Engineering, leading macroinvertebrate community investigations in the LIFE+ Albufera project.

Sacco's research focuses on aquatic environments, both superficial and subterranean, using multidisciplinary approaches including stable isotope analysis, environmental DNA (eDNA), and metabarcoding to study functional ecology. Current projects encompass hypersaline lakes biomonitoring in Australia and Chile, groundwater ecotoxicology and modelling, subterranean trophic dynamics, stygofaunal species identification, and urban pond ecology. As a researcher in the Trace and Environmental DNA (TrEnD) Lab, he advances understanding of groundwater ecosystems. He contributes to the Global Research on eDNA in Groundwaters (GReG) project. Key publications include "Groundwater is a hidden global keystone ecosystem" (Global Change Biology, 2023), "Aquatic environmental DNA: A review of the macro-organismal biomonitoring revolution" (2023), "Stygofaunal diversity and ecological sustainability of coastal groundwater ecosystems in a changing climate: The Australian paradigm" (2022), "Getting to the Root of Organic Inputs in Groundwaters: Stygofaunal Plant Consumption in a Calcrete Aquifer" (Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 2022), "Trophic Interactions in Subterranean Environments" (2022), "Elucidating stygofaunal trophic web interactions via isotopic ecology" (2019), and "Tracking down carbon inputs underground from an arid zone Australian calcrete" (2020).