Maria Rescigno is full professor and vice rector for Research at Humanitas University, as well deputy scientific director and group leader at Humanitas Research Hospital, in Milan, where she leads the Immunology Program and the Mucosal Immunology and Microbiota Lab.

She graduated in Biology in the University of Milan and received her PhD in Pharmacology and toxicology. She worked at the University of Cambridge, UK, as a visiting scholar. From 2001 to 2017 she has been the director of the Dendritic cell biology and immunotherapy Unit at the Department of Experimental Oncology at the European Institute of Oncology.

She was the first to show that dendritic cells actively participate to bacterial uptake in the gut and the existence of a gut vascular barrier that resembles the blood brain barrier. She authored more than 160 publications in high impact journals such as Science, Nature Immunology, Nature Medicine, Journal of Experimental Medicine and Science Translational Medicine. She was nominated EMBO young investigator in 2007, elected EMBO member in 2011 and since 2019 she is member of the EMBO council. In 2008-2013 she was visiting professor at the University of Oslo.

Her research activity has been funded, among others, by three ERC grants (starting, proof-of-concept and consolidator). In 2016 she founded Postbiotica, a start-up that exploits microbiota-derived metabolites as new pharmaceutical agents.