Alberto Mantovani is Scientific Director of Istituto Clinico Humanitas and President and founder of the Fondazione Humanitas per la Ricerca, and Professor of Pathology in the School of Medicine at the State University of Milan, Alberto Mantovani was born in Milan in 1948. He graduated summa cum laude in 1973 in Medicine at the University of Milan and in 1976 he specialized in Oncology at the University of Pavia. From 1973 to 1975 he had a scholarship at the Laboratory of Immunology and Chemotherapy at the Mario negri Institute in Milano. From 1973 to 1976 he was a visiting fellow at the Department of Tumor Immunology of the Chester Research Institute in Belmont (GB). In 1978-1979 he was a visiting fellow at the Laboratory of Immunodiagnosis, NIH, Bethesda (USA), first with a Yamagiwa-Yoshida Scholarship of the UICC, and then with a NATO grant.

From 1979 to 1981 he was Senior Investigator in the Department of Tumor Immunology and Chemotherapy at the Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche "Mario Negri", Milan. In 1981 he became Chief of the Laboratory of Immunology at the same institute. From 1994 to 2001 he was full Professor of General Pathology, School of Medicine, University of Brescia, Italy. From 1996 to 2005 he led the Department of Immunology and Cell Biology at the Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche "Mario Negri", Milan.

He has been appointed numerous scientific awards, i.e. Biotec award (1998); the Marie T.Bonazinga Award by the Society of Leukocyte Biology (USA) (2000); the Guido Venosta Prize by the President of the Republic of Italy (2004); EFIS – Schering Plough 1st European Immunology Prize, Paris, France (2006); Galileo Galilei Prize for Research in Biomedical Sciences (2007); PISO Award (2007); Onoreficenza al Merito della Repubblica Italiana; the William Harvey Outstanding Scientist (2009). He is a member of various professional societies, e.g. European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), Henry Kunkel Society, the Faculty of 1000 Biology, and President of the International Cytokine Society, and a highly cited immunologist. The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI Thomson) ranked him as one of 100 most quoted immunologists in the world over the last 20 years, with more than 600 publications.