Dr Sara Piccirillo
Dr. Sara G.M. Piccirillo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cell Biology and Physiology at the University of New Mexico (UNM) Health Sciences Center and a Full Member of the UNM Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Dr. Piccirillo graduated from the University of Milan (Italy) in Medical Biotechnology in 2003 and gained a Ph.D. in Translational and Molecular Medicine in 2008 at the University of Milan-Bicocca. For her post-doctoral training, Dr. Piccirillo was awarded a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship in 2010 and worked as a Research Associate in the Department of Clinical Neurosciences of Cambridge University (UK). In February 2011, she was elected as a Research Fellow of Hughes Hall, one of the 31 colleges in Cambridge. In 2013, Dr. Piccirillo started a collaboration with the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UTSW) in Dallas (USA) and visited the institution between 2014 and 2016 as a Senior Scientist. In 2016, she was recruited to UTSW as a Faculty Member of Internal Medicine, and in 2018, she was promoted to Research Assistant Professor. In 2019, Dr. Piccirillo joined UNM Health Sciences Center as a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor.
Since 2007, Dr. Piccirillo has received numerous awards and grants including the 2007 Best Young Italian Researcher (Premio Sapio Award), the 2010 Young Investigator Award from the British Neuro-Oncology Society and Brain Tumour Research UK, the 2019 Gianni Bonadonna Prize for New Drug Development in Oncology, the 2021 Independent Investigator Research Grant from the AACR and Novocure and the 2021 Translational Adult Glioma Award from The Ben and Catherine Ivy Foundation. In October 2021, Dr. Piccirillo was awarded the Robert M. Faxon Jr. Endowed Professorship in Neuro-Oncology.
She has been invited to speak at several international conferences. In 2024, Dr. Piccirillo was one of the Keynote Speakers at the 5th Annual Neuro-Oncology Symposium organized by the Pakistan Society of Neuro-Oncology, the Pakistan Academy of Neurological Surgery, and the Brain Tumour Foundation of Pakistan.