Since 2008, Laura Berliocchi is Assistant Professor of Pharmacology at the Department of Health Sciences, at Magna Græcia University of Catanzaro (Italy). After her MSc in Biology and Specialization Degree in Biotechnologies in Italy (University of Rome “Tor Vergata”), she was awarded a DAAD fellowship and moved to Germany where she obtained her PhD in Molecular Toxicology from the University of Konstanz, under the supervision of Profs. Pierluigi Nicotera and Marcel Leist. She was a Research Associate at the Medical Research Council (MRC; Leicester, UK) where she participated in the initial setting up new laboratories. Here, she worked in the Neuroscience group lead by Prof. Nicotera on the effects of synaptic and axonal damage on neuronal function and survival, and on the compartmentalization of degenerative processes in neurons. She then was a London Pain Consortium (LPC) Senior Research Fellow and a scientific visitor at University College London (UCL; London, UK) where, under the guidance of Prof. Steve Hunt, she trained in experimental models of pain and worked on mechanisms of local translation in neurons and descending serotonergic control in pain.

She is currently Head of the Pain Unit at the Section of Preclinical and Translational Pharmacology (University of Calabria, Italy), whose research activity is focused on a better understanding of the neurobiology of pain for more effective clinical treatments. Her current research activity at Magna Græcia University is focused on the role of autophagy in neuronal dysfunction and on innovative approaches for the identification of new strategies in pain management.

Together with Drs Diana Amantea and Rossella Russo, she is Editor of the “Frontiers in Neurotherapeutic” book series by CRC Press–Taylor&Francis Group (Boca Raton, FL, USA).