Prof. Rossella Russo obtained her PharmD in 2001 from the University Magna Graecia of Catanzaro (Italy) and her PhD in Pharmacology and Biochemistry of Cell Death in 2005 from the University of Calabria. She was a postdoc at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research (San Diego, USA) where, under the guidance of Prof. S.A. Lipton, she worked on new pharmacological approaches for HIV-associated dementia. In 2018, she obtained the position of Associate Professor of Pharmacology at the Faculty of Pharmacy and Nutritional and Health Science, University of Calabria (Italy). Since the beginning of her scientific career, she has worked in the field of neuroscience, studying the molecular mechanisms underlying neuronal death associated with acute and chronic neurodegenerative diseases. She is the group leader of the Glaucoma Unit at the Center of Preclinical and Translational Pharmacology (University of Calabria, Italy) where her research is devoted to dissecting the mechanisms of retinal ganglion cell degeneration associated with glaucomatous optic neuropathy. Her research activity has recently been focused on the role of autophagy in neurodegeneration and on innovative approaches aimed at modulating this pathway as a new neuroprotective strategy.
