Claudio Franceschi

Claudio Franceschi is full professor of Immunology at the University of Bologna, Italy. He has been the past Director of the Department of Experimental Pathology, University of Bologna (2010-2012), and founder and director of the Interdepartmental Center for Integrated Studies on Biophysics, Bioinformatics and Biocomplexity "L. Galvani" (CIG), University of Bologna (2001-2006).

He also served as Scientific Director of the Italian National Research Center for Aging (INRCA) (1996-2005), a scientific institution of the Ministry of Health devoted to basic aging research and treatment of the elderly. His research activity is focused on the biology of human aging and longevity, and he discoveredthe most important characteristics of immunosenescence in humans (accumulation of memory T cells, shortage of naive T cells, shrinkage of T cell repertoire, activation of innate immunity, role of CMV infection). These studies led to the conceptualization of the theory of “inflamm-aging” that links aging with major age-related diseases.