Davide De Pietri Tonelli

Davide De Pietri Tonelli is a tenured Senior Researcher at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), where he leads the Neurobiology of microRNA Lab, and is internationally recognised for his work on small non-coding RNAs in neuroscience. He holds a degree in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the University of Milan and a PhD in Neurobiology, based on research conducted at the San Raffaele Institute in Milan. As a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden (Germany), he pioneered research on microRNAs in brain development. At IIT, his work focuses on small non-coding RNAs in adult neurogenesis and human brain cancer, contributing to the development of microRNA-based anticancer therapies. Since 2024, he has led space-biomedicine projects investigating circulating RNAs as biomarkers of stress and neuroinflammation-related disorders in astronauts (AstRNAuts) and Italian Navy personnel participating in terrestrial confinement and isolation analogues (ICE-Blue), in collaboration with the Italian Space Agency and Axiom Space. He is the senior author of numerous publications, editor of the book 'Essentials of Noncoding RNA in Neuroscience' and inventor on two patents. Since joining IIT, he has secured over €4 million in competitive research funding.