Paola Ricciardi Castagnoli

Professor Paola R. Castagnoli, currently Scientific Director of TLS (Toscana Life Science Foundation) in Siena, was the founder and Scientific Director of the International Institute of Human Immunology (SIgN) in Singapore from 2007 to 2015, appointed by the Agency for Science, Technology and Research A*STAR of the Singapore Government. The SIgN Institute, established at Biopolis in 2007 by recruiting globally, attracted scientists of the highest scientific caliber from twenty-six different countries. Today, with about 200 researchers, SIgN represents the most prestigious research institution in Southeast Asia in the field of Immunology.

In addition to developing the scientific and strategic lines of SIgN, Professor R.Castagnoli has performed all executive functions of managing director, including administrative, financial (with an annual budget of 50S$ million), and relationships with the international pharmaceutical industry and technology transfer. For eight years, she successfully managed situations of considerable sensitivity and cultural complexity. Professor R.Castagnoli was also a professor of Immunology for 6 years at the two universities in Singapore, NUS and NTU. In 2011, she co-founded the international winter school on advanced immunology (NIF) together with the IFReC Institute in Osaka.

Since 1998, she has been an Associate Professor and then full Professor of General Pathology at the University of Milan-Bicocca, where she directed the Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Immunology in the Department of Biotechnology. She founded the first interfaculty PhD course for the University of Milan-Bicocca in Molecular and Translational Medicine and created and directed the Genopolis Consortium for Functional Genomics, together with the State University of Milan and the Besta Neurological Hospital in Milan. From 1975 to 1998, she was a researcher at the National Research Council (CNR) at the Center for the Study of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology in Milan. Previously, she was a Visiting Scientist at MIT (1982) in Boston and a Post-doctoral fellow at Stanford University (1977-78). She obtained her PhD at the Catholic University of Leuven (1970-74) in Belgium and her Bachelor's degree in Biological Sciences at the University of Florence (1966-70).

In 2000, Professor Paola Ricciardi-Castagnoli was elected as a member of the EMBO (European Molecular Biology Organization) and the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. In 2005, she won a Marie Curie Chair from the EU at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. She has been the Coordinator of three European Projects within the framework of the 4. ^o and the 5th ^o FWP. On the 6th ^o FWP has been a Partner and member of the Steering Committee of 8 other European projects including MUGEN and DC-Thera. Since 2002, she has been President of ENII (European Network of Immunological Institutes) and organizes the International School of Advanced Immunology. She was a member of the Scientific Council of the Max Planck Institute in Berlin and a member of the Scientific Council of the Pasteur Institute in Paris for 6 years. She is part of the Editorial Board of several international scientific journals. She founded the Singapore Immunology Society and was a member of the Board of FIMSA and IUIS (International Union of Immunological Societies).

With her research group, she has published 198 extensive studies in international journals that have been cited in over 32,000 scientific works (H-index 73). She is a co-author of the 1998 work by Bruce Beutler in Science for which in 2011 Professor Beutler received the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology and is ranked fifty-first among the top Italian scientists in the world in the biomedical field (Top Italian Scientists Biomedical Sciences: www.via-academy.org ).

In 2012, the President of the Republic G. Napolitano conferred upon her the honor of Officer of the Order of the Star of Italy for the work carried out in Singapore.