Demichelis Lab - Computational Oncology

Francesca Demichelis, PhD Associate Professor in Molecular Biology
CIBIO, University of Trento, Trento, Italy

Address: Centre for Integrative Biology
University of Trento
Via Sommarive 9,
38123 Trento, Italy
Email: f.demichelis[at]unitn.it;
Experimental Laboratory: Room Green 7
Phone: +39 0461 285305; Fax: +39 0461 283937

Short CV: F Demichelis received her PhD in February 2005 from the International PhD School on Information and Communication Technology in Trento (Italy) where she developed systematic approaches to processing and understanding data generated through Tissue Microarray Technology (modelling heterogeneity/uncertainty in classification approaches relevant to biological entities such as intra-tumor protein expression). Between 2005-2007 she worked at the Brigham and Women's Hospital (Harvard Medical School), as computational biology Post-doc fellow. In joint projects with members of research groups at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, she developed analytical approaches for the analysis of cancer genomics datasets related to prostate cancer disease progression as part of a multi-institutional effort. Between 2008-20011, she worked at Weill Cornell Medical College as Assistant Professor in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and at the Institute for Computational Biomedicine. Her group focused on the study of structural variants (copy number variations - CNVs) as risk factors for cancer development and as potential facilitators (“triggers”) for specific somatic alterations (funded by DOD Young Investigator Award). From 2008 to 2010, she served as co-chair of the analysis team for Copy Number Variations in genome-wide association studies MicroArray Quality Control (MAQC) Project II, managed by FDA and was leader of the bioinformatics effort for the prostate cancer research group at Weill Cornell Medical College. In 2011 she joined the Centre for Integrative Biology at the University of Trento, Italy, where she is group leader of the Computational Oncology laboratory. Adjunct position at the Institute for Computational Biomedicine and Standing Member of the Englander Institute for Precision Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, NY. In 2015, she was awarded a 5-year ERC Consolidator grant on Synthetic Lethality.

Activities: Grant reviewer for NCI Special Emphasis Review Panels 2009/10 ZRG1 OTC-K (58) R. and 2009/10 ZRG1 BDA-A (58) R.; National Medical Research Council, Ministry of Health, Singapore (2010); Austrian Science Fund (FWF), Austria (2010, 2014); Ministry of Health, Italy (2010); Prostate Cancer UK (2011, 2013, 2014), Institut National du Cancer – INCa (2015,2016).
Reviewer for International Journals including: Nature Medicine, Nature Reviews Cancer, PNAS, Annals of Oncology, Genome Research, Genome Biology, Cancer Research, Clinical Cancer Research, Oncogene, Human Genetics, BJ Cancer, Bioinformatics.
Editorial Board of Diagnostic Pathology; Associate Editor for BMC Medical Genomics.