The following list summarizes the most important steps of Prof. Andrea Cavalli's educational and professional career:
- MSc in Medicinal Chemistry - University of Bologna 1990-1996
- PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences - University of Bologna 1996-1999
- Postdoctoral Fellow in Comput. Biophysics - SISSA/ISAS of Trieste 1999-2001
- Visiting Scientist - ETH Zurich - 2001, 2002
- Assistant Professor at the University of Bologna
- Associate Professor at the University of Bologna
- Deputy Director for Computational Sciences at the Italian Institute of Technology
- Full Professor in Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Bologna
Since the beginning of his PhD thesis, Dr. Cavalli has focused on drug discovery projects. Initially, he worked in the field of anti-cancer drug design, investigating the aromatase and cytochrome P450 17 structures as molecular targets. This work was performed in collaboration with other research groups in Italy and in Germany. During his postdoctoral fellowship at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA/ISAS) of Trieste, he augmented his skills in structure-based drug design. He applied these skills to search for new drug candidates against Alzheimer's disease (see Cavalli A., et al. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Engl. 2007, 46, 3689 and Cavalli et al. J. Med. Chem. 2008, 51, 347), after having become Assistant Professor at the University of Bologna. Since 2002, he has also been devoted to the development of both ligand- and structure-based in silico tools that are able to predict the interactions between drugs and the hERG potassium channel. The latter is a well-recognised anti-target responsible for the withdrawal from the market of several drugs in recent years. Due to the interdisciplinary character of drug discovery projects, he has worked with other groups at his department and industrial partners, gaining important experience in cooperating with and managing external collaborations. Having spent almost a year as visiting scientist at the ETH-Zurich in Switzerland, he gained international experience and further developed his scientific network in the drug discovery field. Since 2006, Prof. Cavalli has been independently initiating research projects and leading a drug design and discovery team. He is currently Deputy Director for Computational Sciences at the Italian Institute of Technology of Genoa, where he also is Director of the Research Line Computational & Chemical Biology.
Prof. Cavalli is the author of over 230 publications in international journals with a high impact factor (Nature Commun., Nat. Neurosci., Chem. Rev., Acc. Chem. Res., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Engl., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Med. Res. Rev., J. Am. Chem. Soc., Bioinformatics, J. Biol. Chem., J. Med. Chem., Chem.-Eur. J., Chem. Commun., Proteins, etc.) and has delivered more than 100 invited lectures and seminars. In 2001, he organized an International Workshop at the SISSA/ISAS of Trieste. In 2001, he was invited to be Guest Editor of a special issue of the journal QSAR, which was dedicated to the ‘Density Functional Theory': the issue was published in July 2002 (QSAR, 21, 93-236). Since 2007, he has been the Managing Editor of the Frontiers In Biosciences journal, and recently he has been invited to join the Editorial Board for Bentham's The Open Applied Informatics Journal. Prof. Cavalli is also member of the Editorial Board of Med. Chem. Commun., World Journal of Translational Medicine, World Journal of Neuroscience, etc. In 2003, he was awarded the ‘Farmindustria Prize for Pharmaceutical Research', which is dedicated to scientists younger than 40 years old. Since 2003, he has been the advisor for several diploma and PhD theses. Since 2007, he has been a member of the Faculty for the PhD course in Physics and Chemistry of Biological Systems (Curriculum in Drug Discovery) at the International School for Advanced Studies of Trieste. He is a peer reviewer for Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP), for the American Alzheimer's Association, for the Austrian Science Fund, for the Swiss National Science Foundation, for the Israel Science Foundation, for the PRIN Projects (MiUR-Italy), and for the Committee for Evaluation of Research (CIVR-MiUR), a body nominated by the Italian government to promote research evaluation activities. Furthermore, he is a referee for the following international journals: Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Engl.; J. Am. Chem. Soc.; J. Med. Chem.; Chem. Commun.; Proteins; Br. J. Pharmacol.; Mol. Pharmacol.; etc. He is Academic Editor of PLoS ONE and a member of the Scientific Committee of the supercomputer center CINECA. He is the Director of the PhD Program in Data Science & Computation.
You may find the list of my papers at http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=4xTOvaMAAAAJ&hl=en
