Management

Maria Rescigno has been appointed Scientific Director of CeMM as of November 2025. She emerged as the best candidate in a highly competitive selection process conducted by an international hiring committee. Maria Rescigno is Full Professor at Humanitas University, where she has been Vice Rector for Research as well as Deputy Scientific Director and Group Leader at Humanitas Research Hospital, in Milan, where she leads the Immunology Program and the Mucosal Immunology and Microbiota Lab. Maria Rescigno graduated in Biology in 1990 at the University of Milan. From 1991 to 1994 she worked at the University of Cambridge, UK, in the Department of Biochemistry, as a visiting scholar. From 1995 to 1999, she worked at the National Research Council of Milan where she received her PhD in Pharmacology and Toxicology in 1999. From 1999 to 2001 she worked at the University of Milano-Bicocca where she specialized in Applied Biotechnology. From 2001 to 2017 she was the Director of the Dendritic cell biology and immunotherapy Unit at the Department of Experimental Oncology at the European Institute of oncology. In 2008-2013 she was visiting professor at the University of Oslo. Her entrepreneurial strengths are evidenced by several patents, and in 2016 she founded Postbiotica a microbiota-based start-up. Maria Rescigno authored more than 250 publications in high impact journals and her research has been funded by prestigious ERC grants. She was nominated EMBO Young Investigator in 2007, elected EMBO Member in 2011 and since 2019 she has been Member and from 2024 chair of the EMBO Council. Maria Rescigno has received several awards including the The Pezcoller-Marina Larcher Fogazzaro-EACR Women in Cancer Research Award and is member of the Italian Academy of Science (Accademia dei Lincei).

Giulio Superti-Furga, Ph.D., is Scientific Director and CEO of the Research Center of Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and Professor of Medical Systems Biology at the Center for Physiology Medical University of Vienna. He is also Scientific Director of the Ri.MED Foundation in Palermo, Italy and the designated Director General of the new research center of the foundation. Since 2024 he is chair of EU-LIFE , the alliance of fifteen leading life science institutes in Europe. For three years,  (2017-2019) he has been a member of the Scientific Council of the ERC (European Research Council). He performed his undergraduate and graduate studies in molecular biology at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, at Genentech Inc., South San Francisco, USA, and at the Institute for Molecular Pathology in Vienna (I.M.P.), Austria. He was a post-doctoral fellow and Team Leader at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) until 2004. For several years he served as professor of Biotechnology at the University of Bologna. In 2000, he co-founded the biotech company Cellzome Inc., where for five years he  was Scientific Director and responsible for the Heidelberg research site. He also co-founded the biotech companies Haplogen, Allcyte, Proxygen and Solgate. His most significant scientific contributions are the elucidation of basic regulatory mechanisms of tyrosine kinases in human cancers ,  discovery of fundamental organization principles of the proteome of higher organisms and the discovery of a number of key proteins in innate immunity. Since more than ten years, he has been leading international efforts to understand the function of the human transportome, the ensemble of membrane transporters. At CeMM, he promoted a unique mode of super-cooperation, connecting biology with medicine, experiments with computation, discovery with translation, and science with society and the arts. Giulio Superti-Furga is a member of five science academies, including the Austrian Academy of Sciencesand the the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. 

Anita Ender was born in Schwaz, Tyrol in 1979. She attended a commercial school and is well grounded in human resources and administration management skills. She gained experience at the Institute for Biomedical Aging Research, a former research institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Innsbruck, at the Institute for Pathophysiology at the Medical University Innsbruck, and worked for three years for Georg Wick, the President of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) before joining CeMM in 2005. She has played a major role in building up the institute taking care of human resources, being a highly considered dialogue partner for Giulio Superti-Furga, the CeMM Scientific Director and part of the management team. Since September 2013 Anita Ender has been the CEO and Administrative Director of CeMM responsible for all administrative and scientific support areas of the institute, and leading a team of 35 employees. Anita Ender was elected Board Member of the conference of the 27 institute directors of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Chair of the Board of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Rare and Undiagnosed Diseases in Vienna, recently became Board Member of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Network Medicine and is part of the Strategy Group of EU-LIFE, an alliance of 17 Top Life Science institutes in Europe, as well as an Evaluation Board Member of CERCA Research Centers of Catalonia. Since September 2024 Anita Ender is also the CEO and Managing Director of AITHYRA, the Research Institute for Biomedical Artificial Intelligence of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.