Andrea Musacchio
- Director, Max-Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology - Dept. of Mechanistic Cell Biology
Andrea Musacchio (born 1964) graduated in Biology from the Tor Vergata University of Rome in 1990, working with Prof. Giovanni Cesareni on the development of phage display libraries. Musacchio later moved to the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg to carry out his PhD work in the area of biochemistry and structural biology, supervised by the late Dr. Matti Saraste. After receiving his PhD title from the University of Heidelberg, Musacchio moved to the Harvard Medical School to work as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Prof. Stephen C. Harrison, supported by Human Frontier Science Program and the American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellowships. In Boston, Musacchio worked on the structural characterization by X-ray crystallography and electron microscopy of proteins implicated in trafficking of membranes and proteins in cells, including Clathrin and PI3 kinase. In 1999, Musacchio established his first laboratory at the European Institute of Oncology in Milan, where he began investigating the molecular mechanisms of cell division using a combination of structural, biochemical, and cell biological methods. Cell division remains Musacchio’s main interest to these days. In 2011, Musacchio moved to Dortmund to direct the Department of Mechanistic Cell Biology at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology. In 2012, he received an honorary professorship at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Musacchio authored approximately 160 research papers. He was elected EMBO member in 2009, was awarded three European Research Council grants (2009, 2015, 2021), received the DFG’s Leibniz Prize in 2020, and is an elected member of the German Academy of Science Leopoldina (2023).