Chiara is originally from Messina in Sicily, Italy. She obtained her MSci in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technology from the University of Messina in 2013. Her research project concerned the development of novel iron chelators as potential drugs for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease under the joint supervision of Professor Robert Hider (Kings College London) and the late Professor Giovanni Romeo (University of Messina).

In 2014 Chiara joined Professor Alessio Ciulli and Professor Dario Alessi labs at University of Dundee to conduct her PhD project on the development of Homo-PROTACs, bivalent small-molecule dimerizers as a strategy to induce self-degradation of E3 ubiquitin ligases. Her work culminated in the discovery of CM11, a homo-PROTAC for the self-degradation of von Hippel-Lindau (VHL). CM11 is now commercially available for the scientific community to use to as chemical tool to rapidly knockdown VHL and is also listed on the Chemicalprobe.org Portal.

Following the award of her PhD in Chemical Sciences in 2017, and a short post-doctoral research in Dundee, in January 2018 Chiara joined the research groups of Professor Chris Schofield and Professor Akane Kawamura at University of Oxford to investigate new molecular mechanisms of epigenetic processes. In February 2020, Chiara was awarded a BBSRC Discovery Fellowship and moved to Newcastle University shortly after, where she started here independent career working on protein post-translational modifications.

Chiara started her research group in the MRC Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitination Unit in January 2023.