Alberto Mantovani, MD, is the scientific director of Humanitas Research Hospital, president and founder of Humanitas Research Foundation (Fondazione Humanitas per la Ricerca) and emeritus professor of pathology at Humanitas University, in Milan. He is also Chair of Inflammation and Therapeutic Innovation at the William Harvey Research Institute of the Queen Mary University in London.
His research activity has been focused on molecular mechanisms of innate immunity and inflammation. He has contributed to the advancement of knowledge in the field of immunology, formulating new paradigms and identifying new molecules and functions. Alberto Mantovani is recognized among his peers as a forerunner and a “founding father” of the renaissance of the inflammation-cancer connection.
Mantovani was born in Milan in 1948. He graduated summa cum laude in 1973 in Medicine at the University of Milan and in 1976 he specialized in Oncology at the University of Pavia. From 1973 to 1975, he had a scholarship at the Laboratory of Immunology and Chemotherapy at the Mario Negri Institute in Milan, from 1975 to 1976 he was visiting fellow at the Department of Tumor Immunology of the Chester Research Institute in Belmont (GB) and then in 1978 and 1979 visiting fellow at the Laboratory of Immunodiagnosis at NIH in Bethesda (USA). In 1979 he returned to Italy as a Senior Investigator at Department of Tumor Immunology and Chemotherapy of the Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche “Mario Negri”, in Milan, where he became Chief of the Laboratory of Immunology in 1982 and Head of the Department of Immunology and Cell Biology in 1996.
For his research activity, he has received several national and international awards, such as the Triennial OECI Award from the Organization of the European Cancer Institutes, the Robert Koch Award for his contribution to tumor immunology and immunotherapy, the American-Italian Cancer Foundation (AICF) Prize for Excellence in Medicine, the American Association for Cancer Research International Pezcoller Award for Extraordinary Achievement in Cancer Research and, most recently, the CIMT Lifetime Achievement Award and the Lifetime Achievement in Inflammation Award received by the International Association of Inflammation Societies. Since May 2024 he is member of the National Academy of Sciences USA.
The broad impact of his contributions is testified by citations: as of September 2024 he has over 178,159 citations and an H-index of 190 (Scopus), making him the most cited immunologist in Europe and among the top six immunologists worldwide.
Download the full CV of prof. Alberto Mantovani here.