Maria Grazia Spillantini

Maria Grazia Spillantini received a Laurea in Biological Sciences from Florence University and a PhD in Molecular Biology from Cambridge University working at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. In 1996 she moved to the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at Cambridge University, where she was first a Lecturer, then a Reader, and since 2007 Professor of Molecular Neurology. With her collaborators she identified alpha-synuclein as the component of the filaments that form the Lewy bodies in Parkinson’s disease, dementia with Lewy bodies and the glial inclusions in multiple system atrophy and described one of the first mutations in the MAPT gene causing frontotemporal dementia. Work in her lab aims to understand the relationship between tau or alpha-synuclein aggregation and disease development. She has received several awards, including the Potamkin Prize, the Jay Van Andel award for achievements in Parkinson’s disease, the European Grand Prix of the French Fondation Recherce Alzhe