Ilaria was born in Trieste, Italy. She studied Functional Genomics at the University of Trieste and
obtained her MSc in 2019, focusing on the functional characterization of a splicing variant
responsible for Fanconi anemia (FA) disorder.
For her doctoral work, Ilaria received joint supervision from the University of Trieste and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain) where she
continued her research on FA diagnostic and therapeutic challenges. In this regard, she developed
an optimized mutation screening approach for patient’s exhaustive molecular characterization,
generated FA cellular models suitable for a repurposing drug screen, and dissected novel possible
synthetic interactions with FA deficiency by genome-wide CRISPR knockout screens. In 2023, she
joined the group of Manuel Kaulich with a prestigious Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral
fellowship to establish a CRISPR-based prime-editing screening pipeline for the clinical
interpretation of pathogenic variants of unknown significance.