Stefania Giacomello

Stefania Giacomello is Associate Professor in Spatial Biology at KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Group Leader at SciLifeLab (Stockholm, Sweden). Her research program is focused on the development of new approaches for different spatially resolved modalities to study how cell localization influences biological processes across kingdoms.

Dr. Giacomello developed a multidisciplinary set of skills by studying Biotechnology at the University of Udine (Italy) and working in Plant Genomics at the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB, Cambridge, UK) before moving back to conduct her Ph.D in Plant Genomics. In 2013, she started a postdoc at SciLifeLab where she contributed to the development of Spatial Transcriptomics, a technology that allows to generate 2D gene expression maps of tissue sections, and extend it to plants. Afterwards, she joined the National Bioinformatics Infrastructure of Sweden as Senior Bioinformatician and specialized in the analysis of single-cell and spatial transcriptomics data before starting her research group in 2019.

Among the projects of her lab, there are the development of Spatial metaTranscriptomics to spatially detect host-pathogen interactions, the study of the impact of spaceflight on mouse brain spatial gene expression, and the development of miniature Spatial Transcriptomics to analyze micro-scaled organisms like Brugia malayi, a parasitic worm causing lymphatic filariasis.