Vincenzo Cerullo, Vince, is professor of Biological Drug Development, Faculty of Pharmacy, Head of Drug Research Program, HiLIFE fellow, Translational Immunology Programme, University of Helsinki.
Vince got his PhD at Centre for genetic Engineering (CENIGE) at University of Naples, Federico II in 2004, then he moved to Houston Texas (USA) for a postdoc at Baylor College of Medicine. In 2009 he moved to University of Helsinki where he worked as senior researcher until 2012 when he was awarded the tenure-track professorship and started the ImmunoViroTherapy Lab. In these years IVTLab has raised more than 5 million Euros for research, including the prestigious ERC Consolidator Grant, HiLIFE fellow and Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation grant. The group has produced tens of scientific papers and patents and has co-founded a multimillion spin-off company together with the University of Helsinki (VALO therapeutics). Vince has been awarded the Outstading Young Investigator award in 2014 by the European Society of Gene and cell Therapy and the Excellence in Research award by the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy in 2015.
One of Vince’s passion is science dissemination, this is why has been involved from the beginning in organizing the Science track in Slush, he has pitched himself on the Slush stage in 2015, 2016 and on the Slush Y Science stage in 2017 (www.slush.org). Among other things, he has also presented a TEDx talk on the importance of creativity in science (https://youtu.be/1btbElPnREI)