Michela Deleidi studied medicine at Vita-Salute University, San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy. She completed her residency in neurology followed by a research fellowship at the Neuroregeneration Institute at Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA. During this time, she focused on pluripotent stem cell technology for Parkinson's disease (PD) modeling and regenerative medicine applications. She was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship and she relocated to Germany to pursue her PhD studies at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) in Tübingen. By combining cellular reprogramming with genome editing, her work led to one of the first stem cell-based models of PD, clearly showing a mechanistic link with lysosomal storage diseases. Since 2016, Michela Deleidi is a Helmholtz Young Investigator at DZNE and an assistant professor of Neurology at the University of Tübingen. Her research mostly focuses on the role of the link between mitochondria and the immune system as an early trigger of neurodegenerative diseases.