Federica Sallusto received the degree of Doctor in Biology from the University of Rome and performed postdoctoral training at the italian Institute of Health in Rome (ISS) and at the Basel Institute for Immunology (BII). In two groundbreaking papers published in 1994 and 1995, she reported that monocytes are precursors of DCs and showed that DC maturation could be induced by microbial stimuli. In 1995, she started her own group at the ISS focusing on allergy and after two years she moved to the BII where she started a new line of research on T cell trafficking. Her studies revealed a differential expression of chemokine receptors in human Th1 and Th2 cells leading to the characterization of “central memory” and “effector memory” T cells as memory subsets with distinct migratory capacity and function. Since 2000, she is a group leader at the IRB. Among her recent contributions are the epigenetic control of cytokine gene expression in human T cells and the characterization of Th17 and Th22 cells. To complement her work in the field of human immunology, she started a line of research to study in vivo lymphocyte migration in the mouse system. These studies have challenged current dogma by identifying new mechanisms of lymphocyte migration in inflamed lymph nodes and in the brain. She received the Pharmacia Foundation Award in 1999, the Behring Lecture Prize in 2009, and the Award of the Foundation for Study of Neurodegenerative Diseases in 2010. Since 2010 she is member of the German Academy of Science Leopoldina.