Professor Maria Grazia Spillantini received the honour of Officer of the Order of the Star of Italy (Ufficiale OSI).
The honour was awarded on 1 March 2019 by Ambassador Raffaele Trombetta on behalf of the Italian president, in recognition of her contribution to strengthening British-Italian relations in the fields of science.
Professor Spillantini is a lecturer in molecular neurology at the University of Cambridge, where she researches the mechanisms that cause diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and dementia.
She is also a member of the Royal Society, the American Society for Neuroscience and the British Alzheimer’s Society. She has published over 230 chapters and articles and was one of the top 30 most cited neurologists between 1997 and 2007. She was the winner of the Potamkin prize in 2000.