From 2022 she joined SISSA where she opened her lab focused on evolutionary neurobiology and glial cells.

Carmen Falcone completed her undergraduate studies in Molecular Biology at the University of Naples Federico II (Naples, Italy), and her Master’s degree in Neuroscience at the University of Trieste (Trieste, Italy). She received her PhD in Functional and Structural Genomics from SISSA in 2017, studying the genetic mechanisms regulating astrocyte development in mouse. Then, she moved to University of California – Davis for her postdoc, where she investigated astrocyte evolution and development across mammals, and started her focus on the interlaminar astrocytes, a special type of cortical astrocytes (ILAs), with the cell body in layer I and long, branched processes crossing several cortical layers. During her postdoc she established two new research lines on the interlaminar astrocytes and on varicose-projection astrocytes and she unlocked novel astrocyte specific features in primates, in terms of density, morphological complexity and molecular markers.  

In 2022, she was awarded a 5-year research grant by Human Technopole and she became Group Leader at SISSA. Her lab currently focuses on the study of astrocyte roles in the primate brain, and, more generally, on the understanding of cortical astrocytes roles in the evolution and development of the mammalian brain.