Gaia Pigino is the Associate Head of the
Structural Biology Research Center[1] and Leader of the "Pigino Group"[2] at the Human Technopole in
Milan,
Italy.[3]
Education
Gaia Pigino studied
Natural Science at the
University of Siena in
Italy, finishing with a
Diploma in 2002. From 2003 to 2007, she earned her Ph.D., working in the Department of Evolutionary Biology at the
University of Siena, supervised by Prof Fabio Bernini and Prof Claudio Leonzio.[4]
Career and research
From 2007 to 2009, Gaia Pigino was employed at the Laboratory of Cryotechniques for
Electron Microscopy in the Department of
Evolutionary Biology of the University of Siena, under the guidance of Prof. Pietro Lupetti. she continued her postgraduate studies, also attending the prestigious Physiology course at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole (Massachusetts, USA). Subsequently, Gaia Pigino worked with Prof. Takashi Ishikawa at the
ETH Zurich from 2009 to 2011 and then at the
Paul Scherrer Institute from 2011 to 2012.[5][6][7][8]
Since 2021, Gaia Pigino has been the Associate Head of the
Structural Biology Research Center and Leader of the "Pigino Group" at the Human Technopole in
Milan,
Italy.[12][13][14]
Her research group operates at the intersection of structural and molecular
cell biology, utilizing the most current methodologies from both areas to investigate the structure and dynamics of
molecular machines that participate in the assembly and function of motile and primary
cilia. Their overarching objective is to comprehend the fundamental molecular mechanisms of ciliary functions, as well as their malfunctions in
ciliopathies.
Gaia Pigino is an internationally well-known biologist. Hence, she is frequently invited to workshops,[15][16] seminars[17] and conferences[18][19][20][21] in the field.