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Acknowledgements
First of all, I would like to thank my co-advisor Dr Chiara Boschi (IGG-CNR (Pisa)), for giving me the opportunity to work on this research topic. Her support has made the present thesis possible. Thank you for your ideas and your experience to guide me towards new stimuli. In addition, I would like to thank my advisor, Prof Giovanni Zanchetta (University of Pisa), for giving me the chance to participate to this PhD.
A large number of lovely people have contributed to the success of this research project and I am sincerely grateful to each of them for their help. Thanks to Dr Ilaria Baneschi and Dr Andrea Dini, for her help with sampling and helpful comments, discussions and suggestions that gave me. I am grateful to Simone Vezzoni and Tiziana Loni for their kind help during field samplings and laboratory analyses. Very special thanks go to Gabriele Paoli for having supported me during ICP analyses by night.
I would like to thank Prof. Natale Perchiazzi for the collaboration in this research through his precious help with XRD analyses. In addition, I wish to thank Prof. Graziano Di Giuseppe for introducing me to the knowledge of “biological world” and giving me the necessary support.
I would like to express my gratitude for all the help I have received during my work in a number of different laboratories. I would like to thank Prof. Bénédicte Ménez and her team for their support during biological characterization by SEM and CSLM imaging at the GAP- IPGP (Paris).
Thanks to Prof. Lukas Baumgartner for giving me the idea of a geochemical model on Montecastelli carbonation process and for helping me with the geochemical PHREEQC code. In addition, I would like to thank Dr Benita Putlitz and other PhD students for help and support during silicate oxygen isotope analyses at the University of Lausanne. My appreciation also goes to Dr Alexey Ulianov (University of Lausanne) for availability to help me with Laser ablation-ICP-MS and for having several hours to explain me how to process the data.
My sincere thanks to Gianluca Giorgi to for the kindness and helpfulness of samplings at Montecastelli mine copper (Pisa).
I gratefully thank my parents, Jacopo and my friends for their permanent, unconditional support and encouragement.