Francesca holds a Master's in Cell Biology, Molecular Biology, and Biomedical Sciences from the University of Rome Tor Vergata. Her thesis, conducted at the Laboratory of Regenerative Pharmacology under Dr Puri at Santa Lucia Foundation (Italy), focused on Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and Inflammation in muscular fibroblasts. During her two-year work, she also contributed to a bioinformatic-based project to characterise the exosome content in a Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) mouse model and participated in two pre-clinical trials centred around DMD and Dysferlinopathies. As a PhD candidate, in the laboratory of Biochemistry of signal Dynamics under Dr Faesen, at the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences (Germany), Francesca pioneered a project on the biochemical reconstitution of Autophagy initiation, redefining the dynamics framework and mechanistic process for Autophagy complex formation. Her PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Göttingen revolved around the study of metamorphic proteins within the autophagy initiation complex.