YIP News

Marie Curie Awards for mobile research excellence

The Marie Curie Awards for mobile research excellence aim to enhance the visibility and attractiveness of research careers. Maria Pia Cosma, who won her prize for her research into molecular and cellular genetics, was an MC fellow in Vienna (AT). She now works at the non-profit Telethon Institute of Genetics and Medicine (TIGEM) institute in Naples (IT), where she set up her own research group in 2003. She considers that “mobility and exchanges between people are the soul of a research institute’s success”. She is pleased with the prestige that comes with the prize. “This prize involves visibility and, being from the south of Italy, this is an important issue. This will enable me to network and interact with other scientists in my field.”

After obtaining her PhD in cellular and molecular genetics from the University of Frederico II School of Medicine (Naples), in the late 1990s, Maria Pia Cosma received a Marie Curie fellowship to spend three years at the Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna. This post-doctoral mobility experience led her to concentrate her research on gene transcription mechanisms.
On her return to Naples, she joined the Telethon Institute of Genetics and Medicine (TIGEM – Naples), a research body devoted to the study of hereditary genetic diseases. “After two years at the TIGEM, I was lucky enough to be given the responsibility of setting up my own research group. In 2004, one of our results was the specific identification of the human gene associated with the hereditary disease known as Multiple Sulfatase Disorder or MSD.” Maria Pia's high-level research was given an added boost when she was approved as an EMBO Young Investigator.