Federica Portale received her Master’s degree in Medical Biotechnologies and Molecular Medicine at the University of Milan, where she completed her thesis on the mechanisms underlying the differentiation of human T memory stem cells. In 2014, she moved to the University of Milan-Bicocca and she obtained her PhD in Molecular and Translational Medicine. Her research project, conducted at the M. Tettamanti Research Center, focused on investigating the crosstalk between mesenchymal stromal cells and leukemic blasts within the leukemic bone marrow niche.

In 2019, she joined the Tumor Microenvironment Laboratory at Humanitas Research Hospital as a postdoctoral fellow, where she led a research project aimed at elucidating the mechanisms underlying NK cell dysfunction in the prostate tumor microenvironment, with the goal of developing innovative NK cell-based immunotherapeutic approaches.
She currently serves as Staff Scientist in the same laboratory, supporting ongoing research activities across multiple projects.