Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri

Biographical Sketch

Ariela Benigni Biography

Ariela Benigni, Biol. Sci. D, PhD, is Scientific Secretary of the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research and Research Coordinator of the Mario Negri Institute at Bergamo and Ranica sites. After her degree in biological science, she spent time training abroad, in Strasbourg, London and Boston and then she got the PhD at Maastricht University.

She has held distinguished positions internationally, including Consultant World Health Organization, Senior Fellow in Obstetric Medicine at University of Oxford. In 2013 she was named to take part to the Visiting Committee of AERES – Agence d’Évaluation de la Recherche et de l’Enseignement Supèrieur – for the evaluation of scientists at the Hôpital Necker in Paris. In 2017-2018 she has been a “Innovation and Discovery Task Force” Commission Member, American Society of Nephrology. She has been a Program Committee Member of the Word Congress of Nephrology, WCN 2015 (Cape Town) and of the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) 2016 Meeting (Chicago). In 2019 she was organizer and co-chair of the course on diabetic nephrology as part of the Educational Program at the American Society of Nephrology Meeting 2019 (Washington). In 2020 she has been appointed member of the Dutch Kidney Foundation International Scientific Advisory Board.

Her team identified vasoactive and inflammatory mediators of renal damage in experimental and human progressive renal diseases. Recent interest of her group focuses on looking at therapies to halt renal disease progression or even induce regression of kidney lesions by multidrug approach as well as stem cell therapy. In 2012 dr. Benigni received the Merit Award of Bergamo City Hall for her contribution to science and in September 2019 she received the "Tomoh Masaki Award" International Award for her studies on endothelin. She acted as Associate and Academic Editor of several international journals and is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Nephron. She has published more than 315 peer-reviewed articles and she belongs to the Top Italian Scientists and to the Top Italian Women Scientists groups.