Dr. Federica Sallusto

Biography

Federica Sallusto received her degree in Biology from the University of Rome in 1988 and undertook postdoctoral work at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità in Rome and at the Basel Institute of Immunology, where she was a member from 1997 to 2000. In 2000, she became the group leader of the Cellular Immunology Laboratory at the IRB and established the Center of Medical Immunology. In 2017, she became a Full Professor of Medical Immunology at ETH Zurich and the Università della Svizzera italiana in Lugano, holding a joint professorship. Her original contributions include the development of methods for culturing human dendritic cells, the discovery of human Th1, Th2, and Th17 cells expressing distinct sets of chemokine receptors, and the definition of central effector memory T cell subsets and skin-homing Th22 cells. Her research has shown how NK cells, T helper cells, and cytotoxic T cells migrate to inflamed lymph nodes, significantly modulating T cell responses. Encephalitogenic Th17 cells utilize CCR6 to enter the central nervous system choroid plexus. She has received several awards including the Pharmacia Allergy Research Foundation Award in 1999, the Behring Lecture Prize in 2009, and the Science Award from the Foundation Study of Neurodegenerative Diseases in 2010. She was elected to the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 2009 and to EMBO in 2011. From March 2013 to March 2015, she served as president of the Swiss Society of Allergology and Immunology and is currently the President Elect of the European Federation of Immunological Societies (EFIS). In 2018, she became a member of the National Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).

Research Interests

Experience

Awards