Sara Carloni is Principal Investigator of the Microbial Systems and Human Interfaces (MSHI) Lab at Humanitas University, where she is also involved in teaching Microbiology and Clinical Microbiology.

She obtained her PhD in Molecular Microbiology from the University of Milan and trained as a postdoctoral researcher at the European Institute of Oncology (IEO) and Humanitas University in the laboratory of Maria Rescigno, contributing to the identification of the choroid plexus vascular barrier as a functional interface regulating gut–brain communication.

Her research focuses on microbial communication systems, including quorum sensing molecules, metabolites, and bacterial extracellular vesicles, as drivers of disease trajectories.

Her work integrates clinical cohorts with multi-omics and network-based approaches to move from descriptive microbiome analysis to functional microbiology, with the goal of identifying actionable microbial signals and reprogramming them for therapeutic intervention.