Stefano Piccolo is Full Professor of Molecular Biology at the Department of Molecular Medicine. 

He studies how cells sense their environment and use this information to build and maintain tissues with specific form, size and function. He is also interested in how disruption of these homeostatic mechanisms leads to tumor formation, progression and metastasis. His most recent work is mainly centered on the biology of YAP/TAZ, two closely related transcriptional regulators playing essential functions in tissue regeneration and cancer. He has contributed to the fields of cancer stem cells, molecular oncology, signal transduction, tissue regeneration and biology of somatic stem cells. In 2015, he obtained an ERC Advanced grant to conduct research on the mechanisms of cell plasticity of somatic cells in adult tissues (2015-2020).