My name is Monica Tambalo and I am a postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Simona Lodato’s lab at the IRCCS Humanitas Clinical and Research Center in Milan. My research focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms of neurogenesis and linking them to neurodevelopmental diseases. In my preLights, I will be mainly talking about cell fate decisions, brain development, and the emerging potential of organoids as human model systems.

I graduated in Molecular Biology from the University of Padua in 2010, after spending one year as an Erasmus student in Paris where I studied at the Master of genetics (Paris Diderot University) and worked in the laboratory of Dr. Jamilé Hazan. I then joined Prof. Andrea Streit lab for my PhD in the Centre of Craniofacial & Regenerative Biology at King’s College London. There my work aimed at deciphering the molecular mechanisms regulating the early cell fate decisions of sensory progenitors, with a focus on how inner ear precursors are established. In 2015, I joined Dr. David Wilkinson’s lab at the Francis Crick Institute where I studied how neurogenesis becomes patterned within the developing zebrafish hindbrain. I am now working in Dr. Simona Lodato’s lab, supported by the Umberto Veronesi Foundation Fellowship. I am currently investigating cell fate decisions in the human cortex and the impact of infantile epilepsy in cortical development.