Alessandra Carbone


Alessandra Carbone is an Italian mathematician and computer scientist. She is a professor in the computer science department of the Pierre and Marie Curie University. Since 2009 she has headed the laboratory of computational and quantitative biology. This laboratory studies the function and evolution of biological systems. She is a senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France and received the Irène Joliot-Curie Prize in 2010.

Career

She gained her PhD in mathematics in 1993 at the City University of New York, supervised by Rohit Jivanlal Parikh, after which she took up a post doctoral post at the Paris Diderot University until 1995 when she took a position at the Technical University of Vienna until 1996. She has taught computer science at the Paris 12 Val de Marne University and the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques. She is currently a professor at the Pierre and Marie Curie University

Research into muscular dystrophy

Carbone was awarded the Irene Joliot-Curie prize for the Scientific Woman of the Year in 2010 for her work in using computer science for research into muscular dystrophy. She led the Décrypthon Fight against Muscular Dystrophy project. This work consisted in studying the interactions between proteins in order to find treatments against myopathies and other similar diseases. The database containing the information produced will help researchers to develop molecules to inhibit or improve the interaction of certain macromolecules which could improve treatments.
The project uses cloud computing facilitated by the World Community Grid to enable the large amount of calculations necessary.

Other awards

Carbone is also a recipient in 2012 of the and the Legion of Honour in 2014.