HI!

My name is Victor Paky Bondanese and I was born in Venezuela in 1979 where my mother’s family moved when she was young, but both my parents are Italian. So soon before I was born they wanted to move in Venezuela where we lived until I was 4, then we moved back to Italy. I am from  a city by the Adriatic sea called Termoli where my family still lives. I attended the so called “Liceo Classico” where subjects as Latin, ancient Greek and Philosophy are taught and now and then I used to work as a waiter in weddings (don’t know is you’ve ever been at any Italian wedding… we tend to exaggerate there!), go around the city by rollerskates, swimming and playing volleyball (unfortunately my career in the latter was quite short… just as me ;-)). After high school I decided I had enough of the subjects studied so far and was instead very attracted by Physics, Chemistry and Biology. That’s why now I am a biologist… uhm… really? Still can’t call me that way! I wanted to do the PhD in UK because I’ve always thought it’s an interesting place here and generally because I reckon that things here work better, with a good organization and that universities are widely competitive in the biomedical research. So I left Italy and the university where I was and flew to London after having applied for several PhDs. While in London I tried to improve my English attending a school (but I am still a goat at it, as you can read), worked in a pub and attended a couple of interviews. I am very happy and proud that Southampton University offered me this place. When I came here for the interview, the environment and everybody were great, and it is a very good and renowned research-based University.

Now I am a totally healthy guy, but in fact until the age of 10 I suffered from asthma, which magically disappeared as I grew up, but I still remember those days, and more than me does my mother.

I still don’t have a specific interest in the general molecular biology area. Actually, according to me you need a good burden of knowledge and experience before you could state something like that… I am still an enthusiastic student of everything tickles my curiosity. But it might sound as a strange coincidence that I got involved here, and I am very glad indeed and even more would be me as a child who used to say “I wanna work against asthma”.