[3][4] He is the Managing Director of Fondazione Telethon-Genomic and Genetics Disorders Biobank, a member of EuroBioBank (European Network of DNA, Cell and Tissue banks) at the Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza Hospital.

[5] Merla and his team led the discovery of a new rare genetic syndrome intellectual development disorder with cardiac arrhythmia and the gene responsible for it.

[6] Merla received his degree in biological sciences completing his thesis-research work on Drosophila melanogaster in the laboratory of Prof. Gioacchino Palumbo at the University of Bari in 1996.

[9] In 2018, Merla and his team led the discovery of the gene responsible for the rare genetic syndrome intellectual development disorder with cardiac arrhythmia along with the collaborators from America, the Netherlands, Brazil and Switzerland.

[14] In 2015, he was awarded 431,100 Euro by Telethon for studying transcriptional and epigenetic dysfunctions in Williams Beuren syndrome and 7q11.23 microduplication syndrome, following their seminal work published in Nature Genetics titled "7q11.23 dosage-dependent dysregulation in human pluripotent stem cells affects transcriptional programs in disease-relevant lineages" in collaboration with Dr. Giuseppe Testa of European Institute of Oncology, Milan.