Mario Giordano (1964–2019) was Professor of Plant Physiology at the Università Politecnica delle Marche (UNIVPM), Ancona, Italy, where he founded a plant and algae physiology laboratory focussing on the acquisition and metabolism of carbon, nitrogen and sulfur by algae. He was Professor at the Academy of Science of the Czech Republic and an associate researcher at the Institute of Marine Sciences of the Italian National Research Council, Venice. Mario was Director of the Joint Algal Research Center between the University of Shantou in China and UNIVPM. He published over 120 journal articles and book chapters and received the Luigi Provasoli Award from the Phycological Society of America (2002). Shortly before his untimely death, he had been appointed scientific attaché at the Italian Embassy in Beijing.