Maria Gracia Gervasi

Assistant Professor of Reproductive Physiology

Dr. Gervasi obtained her PhD in 2013 from the University of Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires, Argentina) where she conducted research in sperm capacitation and the interaction of sperm with the epithelium of the oviduct using a bovine model. She then performed six years of postdoctoral training at the University of Massachusetts (UMass-Amherst, USA) working on mouse sperm maturation and capacitation. She is a two-time recipient of a postdoctoral fellowship from the Lalor Foundation. After her postdoctoral training, Dr. Gervasi became Research Assistant Professor at UMass-Amherst where she studied the role of sperm on early embryo development. In addition, between 2021 and 2023 Dr. Gervasi worked as Assistant Professor at the Bedford Research Foundation (Bedford, MA) where she investigated human oocyte parthenogenetic activation for the development of human parthenogenetic stem cells. More recently, she worked on the development of sperm treatments and the potential for improvement of assisted reproductive technologies in cattle. 

Research Interests

• Sperm capacitation
• Pre-implantation embryo development
• Contribution of sperm to early embryo development
• Assisted reproductive technologies
• Embryonic stem cells

Hobbies/Non-Academic Interests

• Kung fu
• Traveling
• Cooking: Argentinian empanadas are my speciality!