Born in Rome on 25th March 1969; November 1993 Degree  cum laude at the University of Napoli Federico II. From July 1994 to October 1995 research activity at the Food Science and Technology Department of Reading (UK). 1996-1999 participation in the three year project FAIR-EC 96-1080 entitled Optimization of the Maillard reaction. A way to improve quality and safety of thermally processed food. 1997 Ph. D. in Food Biotechnology; 1998 master degree in Food Biotechnology; October-December 1998 research activity at the Applied Nutrition and Food Chemistry Center of Lund (Sweden). January-April 1998 temporary fellow at the Food Science Department. April1999-Genuary 2001 post-doctoral fellow at the Biocrystallography Research Center of CNR. From January 2001 until now permanent position as researcher at the Institute of Biostructures and Bioimagining-CNR. The scientific activity of Dr SM Monti is mainly focused on Chemical Biology investigations concerning the structural and functional characterization of proteins and bioactive peptides. These studies have been initially focused on Food Systems where Dr Monti mainly investigated the non-enzymatic reaction between primary amines of peptides/proteins and reducing sugars; this reaction is called Maillard Reaction and Dr Monti spent the beginning of her academic and scientific carrier investigating the nature and formation of Maillard products in real foods and model systems. Subsequently, Dr Monti moved to topics concerning biochemistry of proteins involved in biomedical pathways, and nowadays Dr Monti has a consolidated expertise in this field. In particular Dr Monti is involved in studies aiming to deepen the knowledge on secondary and tertiary structure of those proteins whose tridimensional structure is still unknown investigating their folding, minimum regions of contact between proteins as well as developing molecules able to disrupt protein-protein interaction, or inhibit protein activity. Over all, Dr. Montis research activity combines several experimental methodologies such as LC-ESI-MS/MS, limited proteolytic hydrolysis, molecular biology, biochemistry, spectroscopy, circular dichroism, immunometric techniques, surface plasmon resonance and light scattering. In addition, an important part of her research field concerns the cloning, expression and high degree purification of recombinant proteins, as well as Fab production, to be used for activity measurements, NMR and/or X ray structural investigations. These studies gave rise to two patents. Dr. Monti is involved in many national and international research projects, collaborating with a wide range of scientists and institutions (University of Florence, Italy; University of Tampere, Finland; Universit Montpellier II, France). Dr. Monti is author of100+ publications in international scientific journals. Dr Monti is reviewer of international scientific journals.