Elisabetta Furlanis

Elisabetta Furlanis joined the Wyss Center in July 2026 as a Research Scientist in Molecular Biology. Her work focuses on the development of targeted AAV-based optogenetic therapies for the treatment of spasticity.

She completed her undergraduate studies in Italy, earning a Bachelor’s degree in Molecular Biology from the University of Padova and a Master’s degree in Neuroscience from the University of Trieste in collaboration with the Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA).

She obtained her PhD in Neurobiology at the Biozentrum, University of Basel, where she studied the role of RNA-binding proteins and RNA processing in neuronal specification and function. She then carried out her postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute (Boston, USA), where she led a project resulting in the development of an AAV-based toolkit for targeted gene delivery to specific neuron types across species.