Marta Carroni - Biography#
Marta Carroni is the Head of the Swedish National Cryo-EM Facility at SciLifeLab in Stockholm, whose start and development she drove since its institution in 2016. She is a trained structural biologist and more specifically an expert in cryo electron microscopy (cryo-EM), technique on which she received extensive training since 2007 first at Imperial College London and then at Birkbeck College London, under the supervision of Helen Saibil. Marta Carroni has initiated and trained in electron microscopy and image processing a large number of researchers in Sweden and abroad; she is often invited as teacher at cryoEM symposia and workshops. For this contribution, she has been named one of the female innovators by the Italian Association of Women Inventors and Innovators in 2018 and awarded the Hugo Theorell price in 2023. Since 2020, she is also the director of the Cellular and Molecular Imaging platform at SciLifeLab where she oversees the integration between different imaging modalities.
Since 2022, she can continue to run research projects with her research group, composed of 2 PhD students and 2 postdocs, mainly looking at AAA+ molecular motors and their regulatory mechanisms. The group often hosts master and Erasmus students. Lately, she has been able to secure financial support for deepening her research line in protein quality control chaperone systems as well as to open new lines of investigation for the integration of experimental and computational methods in biomedical applications. While developing an independent research path, she fosters many collaborations with colleagues in Europe, in particular with the team of Axel Mogk at Heidelberg university, a long-standing collaborator.
She teaches a full master and PhD module in cryoEM for the course of protein structure and function at the department of biochemistry and biophysics at Stockholm University. With the facility team of 6 that she manages, she organizes courses in cryoEM applications and ancillary techniques as well as the international cryoNET annual symposia. The facility is well embedded in a Nordic network and Marta Carroni organizes regular meeting and is involved exchange visits with colleagues from Denmark, Norway and Finland.
In her free time, she enjoys learning new languages, her parallel passion together with protein structures. A convinced European, she believes that languages carry with them full culture loads rather than just words. Common way of communication, like science or shared languages, unite people.
In short, even though through an unusual path in the academic world, Marta Carroni is pursuing her scientific interests, fostering collaborations across Europe and training younger scientists in the techniques and research questions she is passionate about.
A detailed CV is attached.
