Dr. Letizia De Chiara is a junior PI at the University of Florence, Italy. She obtained her PhD at the Molecular Biotechnology Center of Turin, Italy where she investigated the utility of novel stem cell therapies for the treatment of Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) and prevention of progression to Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD). Following the completion of her PhD studies, she moved to University College Dublin (UCD), Ireland and then she joined the Weill Cornell Medical College of New York, USA to pursue her studies on stem cell plasticity and kidney injury. In 2019, she was awarded a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Reintegration Fellowship to return to Italy in the lab of Prof. Paola Romagnani. Since then, her research has focused on investigating the link between AKI and CKD development. Recently, she was awarded a L’Oreal-UNESCO for Women in Science Award for her studies on developing new prognostic markers to stratify patients at risk of progressing toward CKD following AKI. She is currently part of the Kidney International editorial board and she is part of the second cohort of the International Society of Nephrology emerging leaders.