Sabrina Sabatini of the Charles Darwin Department of Biology and Biotechnology is among the first two recipients of the Armenise Mid-Career Award 2021, along with Marie-Laure Baudet of the University of Trento. The initiative was sponsored by the John Armenise Harvard Foundation, which launched a new pilot grant to fund mid-career scientists.

Sabrina Sabatini uses plant models to study the complex molecular mechanisms that control the balance between cell division and differentiation.

"In my lab - says Sabrina Sabatini - we study the molecular mechanisms involved in establishing the boundary between cells with different functions. The establishment and maintenance of these boundaries are fundamental for the proper development of organs. The grant I won will be crucial for my research because the Italian funding of research, and in particular of basic research, is extremely scarce at this time".

Sabrina Sabatini started the laboratorio di Genomica funzionale e proteomica dei sistemi modello at Sapienza University in 2003, also thanks to the Armenise Harvard Career Development Award and was later the winner of a consolidator grant from the European Research Council (ERC).