Mauro Giacca, MD PhD, is Head of the School of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Medicine & Sciences, and Professor of Cardiovascular Sciences at the Faculty of Medicine & Life Sciences, King’s College London. Until 2019, he has served as the Director-General of the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), an organization in the United Nations system based in Italy. In 2005, he became a Full Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of Trieste, Italy.

He is the President of the International Society for Heart Research (ISHR) European Section and serves on the scientific boards of numerous academic institutions internationally. He is a founder of Forcefield Therapeutics and Heqet Therapeutics, two recent startups that develop cardiovascular biologics, and the co-founder of Purespring Therapeutics, which operates in the field of AAV gene therapy of the kidney. He is an elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the United Kingdom.