Education:
1992: Laurea (BSc), Physics (cum laude). University of Trieste (Italy).
1993: MSc, Condensed Matter Physics. International School for Advanced Studies, Trieste (Italy).
1996: PhD, Condensed Matter Physics. International School for Advanced Studies, Trieste (Italy).
Main Academic Appointments:
1996 – 1998: Weizmann Institute, (Israel), Sir Charles Clore Postdoctoral Fellow
1999 – 2001: University of Oxford, EMBO Long-Term Fellow
2001 – 2009: University of Cambridge, Royal Society University Research Fellow
2006 – 2008: University of Cambridge, Lecturer in Theoretical Chemical Biology
2008 – 2010: University of Cambridge, Reader in Theoretical Chemical Biology
2010 – present: University of Cambridge, Professor of Biophysics
2014 – present: Co-Director, Centre for Misfolding Diseases, University of Cambridge
2017 – present: Director, Chemistry of Health Laboratory, University of Cambridge
2021 – present: Deputy Director, Molecular Production and Characterisation Centre, University of Cambridge
Selected Other Appointments:
2003 – 2006: Research Fellow, Clare Hall, Cambridge (UK).
2003 – 2010: Associate Editor, Molecular Biology and Evolution.
2009 – 2015: Executive Committee Member, Division of Physics of Life Sciences, European Physical Society.
2010 – 2016: Faculty Member, Protein Folding, Faculty of 1000.
2010 – 2021: Faculty Associate, International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste (Italy).
2011 – 2018: PE3 Panel Member, Condensed Matter Physics, European Research Council.
2014 – 2020: Associate Editor, Biophysical Journal.
2016 – present: Founder, Wren Therapeutics (currently WaveBreak Therapeutics), Cambridge (UK).
2016 – 2022: Director and Chief Scientific Officer, Wren Therapeutics, Cambridge (UK).
2017 – present: Faculty Associate, Neuroscience, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa (Italy).
2017 – 2019: Council Member, Centre of New Technologies, University of Warsaw (Poland).
2017 – 2019: Council Member, Regenerative Mechanisms for Health (ReMedy), Warsaw (Poland).
2019 – present: Member of the Parkinson’s UK College of Experts.
2021 – present: Advisory Panel Member, Next Generation Chemistry, Rosalind Franklin Institute (UK).
2022 – present: Council Member, Lennard-Jones Centre, Cambridge (UK).
2022 – present: Review Committee Member, National Centre for HPC, Big Data and Quantum Computing, National Recovery and Resilience Plan, Next Generation EU Programme (Italy).
2023 – present: Advisory Board Member, International Society for Neurodegenerative Diseases (Canada).
2024 – present: Faculty Associate, Biochemistry, Sapienza University, Rome (Italy).
2024 – present: Council Member and Chair of the Early Career Investigator and Awards Committee, International Society for Proteinopathies (US).
2024 – present: Member of the Global R&D Advisory Board, Alexion/AstraZeneca (US).
2024 – present: Consultant, Flagship Pioneering (US).
2024 – present: Consultant, Quotient Therapeutics (UK).
2024 – present: Scientific Technical Committee Member, Italian Institute of Technology (Italy).
2024 – present: Review Committee Member, Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO),
Publications:
I published over 550 papers in scientific journals, including Nature (4), Science (5), Cell (4), other Nature, Science and Cell journals (40), PNAS (52), J. Am. Chem. Soc. (27) and Phys. Rev. Lett. (13). My H-index is 119 and I am in the Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher List since 2017. I published 2 books:
U. Bastolla, M. Porto, H. E. Roman and M. Vendruscolo (Eds.) “Protein Evolution - A Structural Perspective”, Springer (2007).
M. Buchanan, G. Caldarelli, P. De Los Rios, F. Rao and M. Vendruscolo (Eds.) “Networks in Cell Biology”.
Cambridge University Press (2010).
Academic Honours include:
2007 – EMBO Young Investigator.
2007 – Jean-Francois Lefevre Memorial Lecture, Strasbourg (France).
2012 – Giorgio Careri Memorial Lecture, Rome (Italy).
2013 – Soft Matter & Biophysical Chemistry Award, Royal Society of Chemistry (UK).
2013 – Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK).
2017 – Giuseppe Occhialini Prize, Institute of Physics (UK) and Società Italiana di Fisica (Italy).
2017 – Member of the Academia Europaea.
2019 – Batsheva de Rothschild Fellow, Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities (Israel).
2019 – Rita and John Cornforth Award, Royal Society of Chemistry (UK).
2021 – Eraldo Antonini Memorial Lecture, Italian Biochemical Society (Italy).
2021 – Tomassoni-Chisesi Prize, Sapienza University of Rome (Italy).
2022 – Christopher Dobson Memorial Lecture, Wollongong (Australia).
2023 – Lectio Magistralis, Opening Ceremony of the 2023-2024 Academic Year, SISSA (Italy).
2024 – Cinzia Vitale Prize, Cinzia Vitale Cultural Association (Italy).
Invited talks include:
I presented over 500 lectures about my research at international meetings, schools and universities, including:
FASEB Meeting, Dublin 2023
30th ICMRBS, Seoul 2024
CECAM 55, Lausanne 2024
World Summit AI, Amsterdam 2024
Recent funding include:
Michael J. Fox Foundation. ASAP CRN. Oligomer map of the PD brain. 1/10/2020 - 30/09/2023. $7.7M. Co-PI (PI Nicholas Wood).
ERC ITN. Bio2Brain. 1/10/2020 - 30/09/2023. €3.5M. Co-PI (PI Carmen Gruber-Traub).
ERC Twinning. Twin2PIPSA. 1/10/2022 – 30/09/2025. €1.48M. Co-PI (PI Claudio Gomes).
ERC Twinning. Twin4Promis. 1/10/2022 – 30/09/2025. €1.5M. Co-PI (PI Georgios Skretas).
Nidus Laboratories. Nidus Cambridge Laboratories. 1/06/2018 to 31/05/2023. £5M. PI.
UKRPIF. Chemistry of Health Laboratory. PI. 2015. £17.6M.
WBH Foundation. Reversing mitochondrial ageing. 1/03/2018 to 28/02/2020. £2M. PI.
Novo Nordisk Foundation. PRISM: Protein interactions and stability in medicine and genomics. 1/10/2019 to 30/09/2024. £7.6M. Co-PI (PI Kresten Lindorff-Larsen).
Novo Nordisk. Antibody developability. 1/05/2020-30/04/2022. £700k. PI.
Wellcome Trust. Liquid droplets and hydrogels: protein phase transition in health and disease. Co-PI. 1/02/17 to 31/01/21. £2.5M.
Elan Pharmaceuticals. Elan-Cambridge centre for research innovation and drug discovery. Co-PI. 1/1/2012 to 31/12/2021. £20M.
Patents:
15 patents on methodologies for controlling protein aggregation and antibody design, including:
‘Method and apparatus for assessing polypeptide aggregation’ WO2005045442.
‘Method for predicting protein aggregation and designing aggregation inhibitors” WO2008015384.
‘Protein aggregation prediction systems’ WO2009068900.
‘Methods and agents for stabilizing non-pathological amyloidogenic polypeptides’ WO2010054127.
‘Rational method for solubilising proteins’ WO2014202972.
‘Treatment of hydrogel-dependent amyloid aggregation disease’ CA2790636.
‘A method of rational antibody design’ WO2016091765A2.
‘Method of identifying novel protein aggregation inhibitors based on chemical kinetics’ WO2017118841A1.
‘Massively parallel C. elegans tracking’, US 11295546.
‘Rational design of an oligomer-specific antibody’, GB1912008.8.