Curriculum vitae – Diego De Stefani
Personal information
First name: Diego
Family name: De Stefani
Place and date of birth: Rovigo, 09/07/1980
Nationality: Italian
Email: diego.destefani@gmail.com
Email: diego.destefani@unipd.it
ResearcherID: I-7715-2015
ORCID ID: 0000-0003-3796-8907
Google Scholar: http://scholar.google.it/citations?user=YcpsjP8AAAAJ

Education
2005: Master's degree in Medical Chemistry (Chimica e Tecnologia Farmaceutiche), University of Ferrara, Italy, summa cum laude
2009: PhD in Pharmacology and Molecular Oncology, University of Ferrara, Italy

Current position
2019 – present: Associate Professor, Dept. of Biomedical Sciences, University of Padova, Italy

Teaching activities
2018 - present: lecturer, Biochemistry (80 hours/year), Pharmaacy degree, University of Padova, Italy
2016- 2018: lecturer, Biochemistry (40 hours/year), Sport Sciences degree, University of Padova, Italy
2013 - 2016: lecturer, General pathology (40 hours/year), Nursing degree, University of Padova, Italy
2015: Lecturer, General pathology (8 hours), Pharmacy degree, University of Padova, Italy

Awards
2015: Young Bioenergeticist Award, Bioenergetics subgroup of Biophysical Society
http://www.biophysics.org/Membership/Subgroups/Bioenergetics/PastYoungBioenergeticistAwardees/tabid/730/Default.aspx

Publications
I published 38 articles on international peer-reviewed journals. Total impact factor is approx. 400. Average IF/pub is 10. According to Google scholar: >6200 citations (160 citations/pub), H-index 26. According to Scopus: >4600 citations (120 citations/pub), H-index 22.

Editorial activity
Reviewer for Plos ONE, Cell Death & Diseases, Cell Death & Differentiation, Journal of General Physiology, FEBS Letters, Scientific Reports, Biochemical Journal, PNAS, Cell Reports and Frontiers Cellular Neuroscience.

Main scientific contributions
My work has been always focused on mitochondria, in particular on ion channels located in this organelle. I contributed to the identification and characterization of the first described macromolecular complex located at the interface between ER and mitochondria, where the IP3R, the ER Ca2+-releasing channel, is coupled to VDAC, the Ca2+-channel of the OMM, through the chaperone GRP75 (Szabadkai G et al, J Cell Biol. 2006). I also demonstrated that this complex is dynamically tuned to transfer specific signals (e.g. Ca2+-dependent apoptotic stimuli) from one organelle to the other (De Stefani D et al, Cell Death Differ. 2012). Most importantly, I identified the long sought Mitochondrial Calcium Uniporter (MCU), i.e. the channel of the IMM responsible for the electrophoretic accumulation of Ca2+ inside organelle matrix (De Stefani D et al, Nature. 2011). I also identified the endogenous dominant-negative isoform of MCU, named MCUb (Raffaello A et al, EMBO J. 2013) and characterized the gating mechanism of MCU, mediated by MICU1, MICU2 (Patron M et al, Mol Cell. 2014), and MICU3 (Patron M et al, Cell Death Differ. 2019). Finally, I recently identified another mitochondrial cation channel, the highly debated mitochondrial ATP-sensitive potassium channels (mitoKATP) and its physiopathological role (Paggio A et al, Nature, 2019).

Full list of publications:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=de%20stefani%20d%5BAuthor%5D
https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=23472903200

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