Francesca Ciccarelli

Francesca graduated in pharmaceutical chemistry (Master's degree) at the University of Bologna. After a year spent as a junior fellow at the Istituto Mario Negri, she joined the group of Peer Bork at the EMBL in Heidelberg. There she worked in comparative genomics and phylogenetics. Francesca got her PhD in Natural Science at the University of Heidelberg and she stayed as a postdoctoral fellow in the Bork group until 2005. She then moved to Milan to establish her own research group at the European Institute of Oncology (IEO). At IEO, her group developed a systems-level approach to study cancer genes and also started to produce and analyse high throughput cancer genomic data.

In 2014 Francesca joined King's College London as Associate Professor (Reader) in Cancer Genomics and Bioinformatics. She has been a seconded Principal Investigator at the Francis Crick Institute since 2017 and was made Professor of Cancer Genomics at King's College London in 2018.

In 2023 Francesca moved to QMUL to lead the Centre for Cancer Evolution at Barts Cancer Institute, while still retaining her attachment to the Crick. She is also co-lead of the Cancer Evolution Theme of the CRUK City of London Centre.