Paola Picotti

Paola Picotti obtained her Ph.D. degree in Biotechnology from the University of Padua, in Italy, focusing on the analysis of protein folding and misfolding using biochemical and mass spectrometry-based techniques. In 2006, she joined as a postdoc Ruedi Aebersold’s group at ETH Zurich (Switzerland), where she contributed to develop the experimental and computational basis of targeted proteomic techniques based on selected reaction monitoring (SRM). In 2011, she was appointed assistant professor at the Institute of Biochemistry of the ETH Zurich where she started an independent research group. The Picotti group applies system-wide ‘omic approaches to studying the functional and pathological consequences of intracellular protein aggregation and develops novel technologies for the analysis of disease-related protein structural changes in complex biological samples. Paola Picotti is also involved in the development of publicly accessible tools to promote the dissemination of proteomics tools and datasets to the scientific community. Her research was recently awarded a Professorship grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation, a European ERC Starting grant and the Latsis Prize. Main contributions of the Picotti laboratory were the development of a structural method to analyze protein conformational changes on a system-wide level and the identification of a novel neuronal clearance mechanism for alpha-synuclein, an amyloidogenic protein connected to Parkinson’s disease.