EDUCATION/QUALIFICATION Graduated with honours (70/70 cum laude) in Biological Sciences, University of Pisa and Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa. Ph.D. in Neurobiology obtained at Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy. SCIENTIFIC CAREER since 2009: CNR Researcher at the Institute of Neuroscience (Milan), permanent position. 2003-2009: Postdoctoral associate at Dept. of Pharmacology and CNR-Institute of Neuroscience, University of Milan. 2002-2003: Postdoctoral associate at CNR-Institute of Neuroscience, Pisa 199-2002 PhD in Neurobiology at Scuola Normale Superiore and CNR-Institute of Neuroscience, Pisa 1996-1998 Undergraduated student at Dept. of Developmental Biology, University of Pisa SCIENTIFIC INTEREST Main interest is to study the mechanisms involved in the formation and function of the synapse -the central element that allows the communication between neurons in brain- and in defining how these processes get wrong in brain diseases. A lot of recent evidence has indicated that several brain disorders, like epilepsy, schizophrenia and autism, but also Alzheimer’s disease, depend on a bad functioning of the synapse. In recent years we demonstrated that the capping protein Eps8 plays a crucial role in dendritic spine formation and plasticity and is reduced in brain of patients affected by autism.