Arianna Tolone

During my PhD, I worked on a joint Marie Skłodowska Curie project with several European laboratories and companies. The aim was the bench-to-bedside development of treatments for blinding retinal neurodegeneration. I completed my PhD in Dr. Paquet-Durand's research group (Institute for Ophthalmic Research, Tübingen) in February 2022 and continued research in the field of retinal degenerative diseases as a Post Doc in the TargetRD consortium funded by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung - BMBF. Although basic research can make a difference when it comes to saving people or improving their quality of life, I now want to work more closely with patients and I think that my professional background but also my personality will enable me to achieve this goal. Over the years, I gained good knowledge about drug discovery and development and participated in training courses on clinical trial design and regulation held by, among others, the Hannover Clinical Trial Center (HCTC). I developed good management skills by managing multiple projects and various collaborations with academic and non-academic partners. I possess excellent communication skills as well as strong empathy and creativity, which I consider to be important personal characteristics when working with a heterogeneous team of colleagues and which contribute to a calm and productive working environment.

I currently work in the field of retinal degenerative disease research as a Post Doc in the TargetRD consortium, funded by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung - BMBF. My work focuses on common signalling pathways in retinal neurodegenerative diseases - with a special focus on the cGMP/PKG signalling pathway - and the discovery of new drugs for their treatment. In addition to this, I manage multiple projects and supervise the work and thesis projects of master's students. 
My work also requires excellent reading and understanding skills for scientific articles to keep up with the latest news and innovations, very good writing skills for writing manuscripts and grant applications, and excellent communication skills, which are important for keeping collaborations going. 

PhD in Nueroscience at the University of Tübingen. 

Study of PKG-mediated photoreceptor degeneration in animal models of inherited retinal diseases in the laboratory of François Paquet-Durand. Project supported by transMed (ITN) under Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 765441.