Alessandra Piersigilli

Alessandra Piersigilli earned her DVM with honor from the University of Camerino (Italy) and her PhD from the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa (Italy) with a dissertation on animal models for preclinical efficacy of biomedical devices. She received her training in Anatomic Veterinary Pathology at the University of Bern (Switzerland) and became a Diplomate of the European College of Veterinary Pathologists (ECVP) in 2013. She worked as Instructor and then Lecturer at the Institute of Animal Pathology of the University of Bern where she trained residents and graduate students. She co-founded the first comparative pathology platform of Switzerland as joint venture with the Institute of Pathology of the medical school of the University of Bern, with the mission of offering support to research in the biomedical field as well and provide comparative training to MD and veterinary residents within the respective residency programs. She also served as pathologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Techology (EPFL) in Lausanne (Switzerland), where she contributed to the design, validation, analysis and interpretation of original research work encompassing biomaterials, metabolism, tumor biology, neuroregeneration among others, as witnessed by her publications. She also taught a course for PhD students of bioengineering and life science in Anatomy and Histology. She joined in 2016 the Center of Comparative Medicine and Pathology of Memorial Sloan Kettering, Cornell University and the Rockefeller University. She was Assistant professor at Weill Cornell School of Medicine and Assistant Lab Member in Cancer Biology and Genetics program at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York City (USA) till December 2020. Her contributions were mostly yet not exclusively in the field of tumor pathobiology and therapy, with a specific interest in CAR T cells development. She then joined Takeda Pharmaceuticals where she is currently still employed as Associate Director of Research, with a role as preclinical safety specialist and head of the investigative pathology lab.