Francesca Buffa
Principal Investigator @IFOM
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WORK HISTORY
Principal Investigator @IFOM
Milan, IT
Head of the Artificial Intelligence & Systems Biology Lab. Our work focuses on understanding the regulatory and ecological principles that shape cancer progression. We combine transcriptomics and functional genomics with AI/ML, agent-based modelling and gene network inference, to investigate how hypoxia and the tumour microenvironment influence cancer evolution. By mapping cellular interactions and evolutionary dynamics, we develop predictive models of cancer growth, progression, and treatment response.
EDUCATION
University of London
PhD, Physics and Applied Mathematics
University of Oxford
Postdoctoral Training, Biomathematics, Bioinformatics, and Computational Biology
Università degli Studi di Torino
Theoretical Physics
SKILLS
ABOUT FRANCESCA BUFFA
I focus on integrating transcriptomics, functional genomics, and advanced computational approaches to unravel the complexity of cancer. By combining large-scale molecular data with mechanistic and AI-driven models, I aim to understand how tumours evolve, adapt, and interact with their microenvironment. A central goal of my work is to build predictive models of treatment response that capture both the molecular heterogeneity of cancer and the dynamic processes driving therapeutic outcomes. I am particularly interested in developing integrative models that connect molecular signals to emergent multicellular behaviour, bridging the gap between high-dimensional data and mechanistic understanding.I started to work in this area during my PhD at the Institute of Cancer Research, University of London, completing it in 2001. After a postdoc at the Gray Institute University College London, in 2007 I moved to the University of Oxford where I started an interdisciplinary computational biology laboratory and established a research programme in this area funded by CRUK and ERC Awards. In 2022 I opened Computational Biology lab at Bocconi: https://cs.unibocconi.eu/people/francesca-buffaand in 2024 a AI and Systems Biology Lab at IFOM:
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