Role
Full Professor of Molecular Biology at Sapienza University of Rome
Bio
A graduate in Biological Sciences and a PhD in Molecular Biology from Sapienza University of Rome, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship from 1998 to 2003 in the Department of Genetics and Cell Biology at Utrecht University, studying the effect of auxin on cell development. Upon returning to Italy, she won the Career Development Award from the Giovanni Armenise-Harvard Foundation—the first award to a plant biology project—and then consolidated her academic career at Sapienza as an associate professor and subsequently a full professor in the Charles Darwin Department of Biology and Biotechnology.
An internationally renowned scientist in plant developmental biology , she has coordinated major research projects, including an ERC Starting Grant from the European Commission. Her studies on the root system of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana have clarified the molecular mechanisms controlling plant stem cells and hormonal differentiation.
His discoveries have opened innovative perspectives for modulating root architecture and optimizing crop adaptation to extreme environmental conditions. He has published extensively in authoritative international journals such as Science, Nature Reviews, Molecular Cell Biology, Current Biology, and Plant Cell.