Chiara obtained both her Bachelor (2017) and Master (2019) degrees in biology from the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETHZ). In the context of her Master, she completed a first research project in Paola Picotti’s laboratory, where she worked on a structural QTL pilot project, using limited-proteolysis-coupled mass spectrometry (LiP-MS). During her second research project, in Ruedi Aebersold’s laboratory, she analyzed to which extent protein co-expression profiles capture physical and functional interactions.
Wanting to broaden her horizons before starting the Master thesis, she next completed two internships at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). In Johan Auwerx’s laboratory, she characterized the effect of a novel brain-penetrant PARP inhibitor in C. elegans. In Kristina Schoonjans’s laboratory, she analyzed a multi-layered dataset originating from mice with altered bile acid signaling.
For her Master thesis, Chiara moved to the US, joining Coleen Murphy’s laboratory at Princeton University. There, she investigated the effect on short-term memory of the loss-of-function of novel genes that were identified to be associated with Alzheimer’s disease through GWAS.
In March 2020, Chiara started her PhD at the University of Lausanne (UNIL) under the supervision of Zoltán Kutalik and Alexandre Reymond. She will work on improving our understanding of natural genetic diversity and its impact on health and evolution.