Dr. Baleriola got her PhD in 2008 after conducting her research at the Center for Biological Research Margarita Salas (CIB-CSIC, Madrid). To further her career in neuroscience research Dr. Baleriola joined the laboratory of Dr. Ulrich Hengst at the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain, Columbia University (New York, USA) in 2010.

Her research projects aimed to unravel a possible role for intra-axonal protein synthesis in amyloid pathology, a central feature of AD. When she joined the Taub Institute there was no pre-existing evidence that local translation in axons could play a role in the adult central nervous system (CNS) in the context of neurodegenerative diseases. She defined a novel unexpected molecular pathway that mediates axon-to-soma spread of amyloid pathology that requires local mRNA translation in axons (Baleriola et al. 2014, Cell). Thanks to her postdoctoral work she was also one of the only twelve candidates that Columbia University nominated for the 2015 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists.