Excella Gionne was born into the Gionnes, a dynasty of wealthy Italian merchants. Through a grandmother, she was also closely related to the British Travis family, who had founded Tricell in the years before her birth. Academically impressive, Gionne was elevated to university education at a young age, and graduated with a BSc majoring in genetic engineering.[2] With her family connections, Gionne was recruited into Tricell's pharmaceutical division, though was otherwise a minor figure in company politics. This changed not long after being approached by Dr. Albert Wesker, a former Umbrella virologist. Wesker saw her as a worthy business partner to maintain a stake in the bio-weapons industry, and provided her with research data on the t-Virus Project he had both personal experience of and through access to the Umbrella Archives. Wesker's approach took place as the Umbrella Corporation collapsed into financial ruin, and with it Tricell's bio-weapons research was capable of not only surpassing Umbrella's own, but replacing its market share.[2] On the cargo ship, the Uroboros Project had reached its completion, and missiles filled with Uroboros were loaded onto an assault bomber. At this point, Wesker saw no further use for Gionne other than killing Chris and Sheva, and infected her with Uroboros to put her claims to the test. Led out into the open against a pile of corpses, the virus failed to stabilize in her body, instead using her body and the pile of corpses to achieve greater mass as a creature known as Uroboros Aheri.[2][6]