Scientific Director of Istituto Clinico Humanitas and President and Founder of the Fondazione Humanitas per la Ricerca, Professor of Pathology (School of Medicine, State University of Milan) Alberto Mantovani was born in Milan in 1948. He graduated (summa cum laude) in 1973 in Medicine at the University of Milan and in 1976 he specialized in Oncology at the University of Pavia. From 1973 to 1975, he had a scholarship at the Laboratory of Immunology and Chemotherapy at the Mario Negri Institute in Milan. From 1973 to 1976, he was visiting fellow at the Department of Tumor Immunology of the Chester Research Institute in Belmont (GB). In 1978 to 1979, he was visiting fellow at the Laboratory of Immunodiagnosis, NIH, Bethesda (USA), with a Yamagiwa–Yoshida Scholarship of the UICC first and then with a NATO grant.

From 1979 to 1981, he was Senior Investigator, Department of Tumor Immunology and Chemotherapy, Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche “Mario Negri”, Milan. In 1981, he became Chief of the Laboratory of Immunology, Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche “Mario Negri”. From 1994 to 2001, he was a full professor of General Pathology, School of Medicine, University of Brescia, Italy.

From 1996 to 2005, he has led the Department of Immunology and Cell Biology at the Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche “Mario Negri”, Milan.

He received various scientific awards, including Biotec award (1998), the Marie T. Bonazinga Award by the Society of Leukocyte Biology (USA) (2000), the Guido Venosta Prize by the President of the Republic of Italy (2004), EFIS—Schering Plough 1st European Immunology Prize, Paris, France (2006), Galileo Galilei Prize for Research in Biomedical Sciences (2007), PISO Award (2007), Onoreficenza al Merito della Repubblica Italiana, and the William Harvey Outstanding Scientist (2009). Ha was a member of various professional societies, e.g., European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), Henry Kunkel Society, the Faculty of 1000 Biology, and President of the International Cytokine Society. He had more than 600 publications, mostly in high-ranking journals. A highly cited immunologist, the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI Thomson) ranked him as one of the 100 most quoted immunologists in the world over the last 20 years of the 20th century.