Description

Katia Cosentino studied Chemistry at the University of Calabria, Italy, where she also earned her PhD.
During her doctoral training, she spent time at ETH Zurich, developing a strong interest in biophysics and membrane biology. She then joined the lab of Ana Garcia-Sáez, first at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg, and later as a Max Planck Fellow and senior scientist at the University of Tübingen, Germany. In 2018, she was awarded the prestigious Baden-Württemberg Elite Program grant to establish her independent research group. In 2019, she was appointed Junior Professor of Molecular Cell Biophysics at the University of Osnabrück, Germany. Since 2025, she has been based at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia where she leads the Cell Death Biophysics group.
Her interdisciplinary research combines biophysics, cell biology, and advanced fluorescence microscopy to provide a mechanistic understanding of inflammatory cell death, with implications for immune responses in disease. She has a special focus on cell membrane permeabilization during pyroptosis and its crosstalk with other cell death programs.