Simona Loda­to

Simona Lodato

Title

Decod­ing neu­rode­vel­op­ment using stem cell-derived models

Abstract

TBA

Biog­ra­phy

Simona Loda­to is junior group leader at Human­i­tas Research Hos­pi­tal, where she leads the Neu­rode­vel­op­men­tal Biol­o­gy Lab, and Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Human Anato­my and His­tol­ogy at Human­i­tas Uni­ver­si­ty.

Simona Loda­to obtained her PhD in 2011 from the Euro­pean School of Mol­e­c­u­lar Med­i­cine (SEMM) and the Uni­ver­si­ty “Fed­eri­co II”, in Naples (Italy), under the super­vi­sion of Prof. Michéle Stud­er at the Telethon Insti­tute of Genet­ics and Med­i­cine (TIGEM). Dur­ing her PhD train­ing, she stud­ied the intrin­sic mol­e­c­u­lar mech­a­nisms con­trol­ling the gen­er­a­tion of dis­tinct class­es of inhibito­ry interneu­rons (IN) in the devel­op­ing mam­malian cere­bral cor­tex. She then joined the group of Prof. Pao­la Arlot­ta at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty, in Cam­bridge (USA), where she shed light on fun­da­men­tal aspects of the mol­e­c­u­lar prin­ci­ples that gov­ern how neu­ronal diver­si­ty and cir­cuit assem­bly are estab­lished dur­ing brain devel­op­ment. In par­tic­u­lar, she focused on the mech­a­nisms that reg­u­late the acqui­si­tion of dis­tinct sub­type-spe­cif­ic pro­jec­tion neu­ron (PN) iden­ti­ty, such as cor­ti­cospinal motor neu­rons (CSMN) clin­i­cal­ly rel­e­vant as cen­tral­ly involved in degen­er­a­tion in ALS and oth­er motor disorders.

In Decem­ber 2016, she was elect­ed mem­ber of the Next Gen­er­a­tion Leader Advi­so­ry Coun­cil, a group of eigh­teen esteemed ear­ly-career sci­en­tists who act as sci­en­tif­ic advi­sors for the Allen Insti­tute for Brain Sci­ence in Seat­tle. And since 2018 Simona is a mem­ber of the Fens-Kavli Net­work of Excel­lence (FKNE), a net­work of lead­ing neu­ro­sci­en­tists advis­ing research strate­gies to shape the future of Euro­pean neuroscience.

Lodato’s research is fund­ed by a Start­ing Grant from the Euro­pean Research Coun­cil (ERC), as well as by the Prad­er-Willi Research Foun­da­tion, the Carip­lo Foun­da­tion, the Ital­ian Min­istry of Health, and the Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion, Uni­ver­si­ty and Research.

https://​www​.human​i​tas​-research​.com/​r​e​s​e​a​r​c​h​e​r​/​s​i​m​o​n​a​-​l​o​d​ato