Giulio Superti-Furga

Scientific Director CeMM
Professor for Medical Systems Biology

Giulio Superti-Furga is interested in many aspects of science, from hard-core biochemistry and molecular biology to the processes leading to innovation and creativity of whole communities. He is dedicated Principal Investigator, with an interdisciplinary group of scientists, engineers and MDs (physician scientists). He is also Professor of Medical Systems Biology at the Medical University of Vienna. Originally he is Italian, he was trained as a molecular biologist at the University of Zurich, at Genentech Inc. in San Francisco, the IMP Vienna and the EMBL in Heidelberg. He co-founded five biotech companies, obtained four ERC grants, has published more than 270 papers and is a member of five scientific academies. As an enthusiastic European citizen, for three years he has been a member of the Scientific Council of the ERC. The institute at which he is Scientific Director since 2005, CeMM, is located in the middle of the very large general hospital campus in Vienna, where, together with some 300 people from 40 nations, he is trying to bring the genomic and systems-views close to the clinical world to improve medical practice. Since 2023 he is also Scientific Director Ri.MED Foundation, Palermo, and will be the founding director of the Biomedical Research and Biotechnology Center (BRBC) under construction in Sicily. For CeMM, and also true for the BRBC, he promotes a unique mode of super-cooperation, connecting biology with medicine, experiments with computation, discovery with translation, and science with society and the arts. Recent interests include ways to create new functional precision medicine approaches and the role of the human membrane transporters in pathophysiology and drug discovery. Life is made possible by the assembly of chemical matter in membrane-enclosed systems, yet too little is known about the processes leading to the selective uptake and differential accumulation of molecules. His team at CeMM (which will remain active) and his new lab at the BRBC are committed to change this. He loves music and the arts in general and is an unreducible optimist. He is convinced that with education, science and respect for people and the planet, the world will constantly become a better place.