Francesca Mattiroli, PhD, is a group leader at the Hubrecht Institute in Utrecht, the Netherlands, leading the laboratory of Chromatin Structure and Dynamics since 2018.

She describes herself as “a structural biologist with a love for chromatin”, the complex of DNA and proteins that makes up chromosomes and encodes for genetic and epigenetic information in human cells. Using a combination of biochemistry and molecular and structural biology approaches, her group studies how this information is faithfully transmitted during cell division. This process is crucial for preventing cellular transformation that leads to diseases such as cancer.

She is a winner of the European Research Council Starting Grant 2019, the prestigious funding for young researchers from the European Research Council. She was elected EMBO Young Investigator in 2023.