Francesca Giordano

F. Giordano is an Inserm research director leading the “Lipid trafficking and membrane contact sites” team at Institut de Biologie Integrative de la Cellule (I2BC) in Gif-sur-Yvette, France. Francesca Giordano earned her Ph.D. in 2007 at the University of Naples Federico II and in 2008 pursued post-doctoral training in Graça Raposo’s laboratory at Institut Curie in Paris, studying the intracellular sorting and function of an intracellular GPCR, OA1, whose encoding gene is mutated in Ocular Albinism type 1. During her second postdoc (2011-2013) in Pietro de Camilli’s lab at Yale University, in US, she developed interest in lipid trafficking and in the emerging field of membrane contact sites. She identified the Extended-Synaptotagmins as the first conserved components of Endoplasmic Reticulum (ER) - plasma membrane contact sites involved in lipid transport. In 2013 she came back to France with an Inserm researcher position and discovered a novel localization and function of proteins of the Oxysterol-binding related protein (ORPs) family at ER-mitochondria contact sites. In 2017, thanks to an ATIP-Avenir program she established her own group at the I2BC, where she continues her research in the area of membrane contact sites. She is also a laureate of the Foundation Schlumberger for the Education and the Research (FSER) and member of the FSER circle. Recent work by her team has highlighted a novel role of ER-mitochondria contact sites in the biogenesis of lipid droplets.