Biography

Maria Santoro is an Associate Professor of Microbiology and Clinical Microbiology at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Italy. She attained a PhD in Medical Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Italy.

She is a member of the ICONA (Italian Cohort of Antiretroviral-Naïve Patients) Foundation; the scientific committee of the ARCA (Antiviral Response Cohort Analysis) database; the Italian PRESTIGIO (Pazienti con Infezione da HIV-1 con RESistenza agli Inibitori della Trascrittasi inversa, dell’InteGrasI e della PrOteasi virale) Registry. She is a panel member for the Italian guidelines on management of people living with HIV. Since 2022, she has been coordinating the Italian HIV NGS Workgroup, created with the aim of creating a collaborative network to implement massively parallel sequencing of HIV-RNA and HIV-DNA at both University and Hospital laboratories throughout Italy.

She has been involved in HIV research since 2002. Her main interests are viral genotyping (by Sanger and next generation sequencing), viral quantification, HIV drug resistance, viral evolution and dynamics, and the structural and functional analysis of viral proteins.

She cooperates with many nationally and internationally recognized scientific researchers in several grants from the Italian National Institute of Health, the Ministry of University and Scientific Research, and the European Community.