Martina Absinta is an Associate Professor of Neurology at Humanitas University and Group Leader at Humanitas Research Hospital, where she leads the Experimental Neuropathology Lab. She is a physician-scientist with clinical and research activities focused on neuroinflammatory diseases of the central nervous system. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health (NINDS/NIH, US, 2012-2018), she became Assistant Professor of Neurology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (Baltimore, US, 2018-2021) and then Head of the Translational Neuropathology Unit at San Raffaele Research Institute (Milan, 2022-2024).

She has dedicated her research work to studying MRI–human neuropathological correlations in multiple sclerosis and identifying novel imaging biomarkers of chronic inflammation, with a special focus on glia-mediated and leptomeningeal inflammation. Her research has highlighted the clinical relevance of compartmentalized inflammation and chronic active lesions in driving progression in multiple sclerosis and the need of novel treatments with bioactivity within the central nervous system. Her scientific work has been published in high impact scientific journals, including Nature, Nature Reviews Neurology, Lancet Neurology, Lancet eBiomedicine, JCI, and JAMA Neurology. 

Absinta’s research has been funded by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, National MS Society, International Progressive MS alliance, Cariplo Foundation, Fondazione Regionale Ricerca Biomedica, Fondazione Italiana Sclerosi Multipla, and the Human Technopole.