International Center for Ocular Physiopathology (ICOP), Fondazione Banca Degli Occhi Del Veneto, Venice, Italy.

Stefano Ferrari took his PhD from the University of Padova (Italy) in 1999 with a project focused on gene therapy for Cystic Fibrosis. In 1998, after being awarded a fellowship from the UK Cystic Fibrosis Trust, he moved to the Department of Gene Therapy of the Imperial College School of Medicine (London, UK) directed by Prof. Alton. He remained at Imperial College as Research Associate until 2003. In 2003, he moved back to Italy and has since worked at the Veneto Eye Bank Foundation on cell/gene therapy projects for the correction of disorders affecting the skin and the ocular surface (e.g., limbal stem cell deficiency). In 2006, he was involved in the first gene therapy clinical trial for Junctional Epidermolysis Bullosa (Mavilio et al., Nature Medicine 2006; 12: 1397-1402). He was one of the Editors of the “Progress & Prospects” review series on Gene Therapy (2002-2011) and currently sits as MC Substitute for Italy to EU-COST Action BM1302 “Joining Forces in Corneal Regeneration Research” (2014-2017). He is co-author of 2 patent applications and author of 6 book chapters and 56 peer-reviewed papers.