Francesca is Professor of Cancer Genomics at Queen Mary University of London. She leads the Centre for Cancer Evolution at Barts Cancer Institute and is Principal Group Leader at the Francis Crick Institute in London. Francesca graduated in Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of Bologna and did her PhD at the EMBL in Heidelberg, where she studied the evolution of genomes using comparative genomics. Francesca’s multidisciplinary team of biologists, mathematicians, oncologists, engineers, and computer scientists applies genetics, imaging and theoretical modelling to study cancer evolution in time and space.

Francesca co-leads the Cancer Evolution Theme of the CRUK City of London Cancer Centre and her work is supported by Cancer Research UK, the MRC, and the European Research Council (ERC).