Neuroimmunology

Emilia grew up in Italy and received a B.S. in Biology and a M.S. in Neurobiology from Sapienza University of Rome. She did her doctoral training in the lab of Beatriz Rico at the Institute of Neuroscience in Alicante (Spain) and at the Centre for Developmental Neurobiology at King’s College London. Her graduate research focused on the cellular and molecular mechanisms of inhibitory circuit development and plasticity in the cerebral cortex. In her postdoctoral work in Gord Fishell’s laboratory at Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute, Emilia focused on microglia-inhibitory synapse interactions during development and discovered that specialized microglia differentially engage with specific synapse types. Over the years, Emilia was awarded numerous prizes such as the Beddington Medal from the British Society for Developmental Biology and the Krieg Cortical Kudos Scholar Award from the Cajal Club. In 2021, she was selected as one of the Next Generation Leaders by the Allen Institute. The Favuzzi lab focuses on Neuroimmune interactions and brain wiring.

After graduating magna cum laude from Princeton University, Dr. Hafler earned his MD/PhD from Harvard Medical School and completed a postdoctoral fellowship funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Connie Cepko's laboratory at Harvard.  He completed an ophthalmology residency at Yale School of Medicine/Yale-New Haven Hospital and a fellowship in retina at Mass. Eye and Ear as a Heed Fellow where he specialized in Inherited Retinal Degenerations.  Following his fellowship, he received a K08 Clinical Scientist Development Award from the NIH and joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School where he served on Mass. Eye and Ear’s Retina Service and in the Emergency and Trauma Eye Care Department.  He has a laboratory in the Department of Ophthalmology in the Yale School of Medicine where he recently generated the first single-cell human retinal transcriptomic atlas and identified the cell types driving macular degeneration. He recently received the American Society for Clinical Investigation Young Physician Scientist Award, the Thome Memorial Foundation Award for AMD Research, and was named the William R. Orthwein, Jr. ’38 Yale Scholar. He studies macular degeneration and glaucoma using single-cell transcriptomics to identify novel therapeutic approaches.