Giulio Taglialatela, PhD

Giulio Taglialatela earned his MS in biological sciences in 1984 and his PhD in pharmacology in 1988, both at the University of Rome La Sapienza in Italy. He was appointed a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology (BMB) at UTMB in 1988 and completed his training in 1990. From 1990 to 1993, Dr. Taglialatela served as director of the Molecular and Cell Biology unit of the Institute for Research on Aging at the Sigma Tau Pharmaceuticals in Pomezia (Rome) Italy. He came back to UTMB in 1993 as a research assistant professor and rose through the ranks to his appointment, in 2011, as a tenured professor in the Department of Neuroscience & Cell Biology. In 2014, Dr. Taglialatela became the vice chair for research of the Department of Neurology and the director of the UTMB Mitchell Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, and was endowed as the Lawrence J. Del Papa Distinguished Chair in Neurodegenerative Disease Research. Under Dr. Taglialatela’s leadership, research at the Mitchell Center has flourished, with center faculty cumulatively receiving in the past five years more than $61 million in research grants from the National Institute of Health as well as from local and national foundations. In May 2022, Dr. Taglialatela has been appointed as the inaugural director of the newly established UTMB Brain Health Institute, an ambitious project under the vision of which UTMB will become the regional center of excellence for basic and clinical neuroscience. Additionally, starting September 1, 2024, Dr. Taglialatela has been appointed Vice President for Brain Health in recognition of his broad institutional role as the leader of the Brain Health Institute.

Dr. Taglialatela has maintained a continuously funded research group at UTMB for the past 30 years, mentoring several graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, medical students and junior faculty. Dr. Taglialatela’s research focuses on the molecular neurobiology of Alzheimer’s Disease and related neurodegenerative disorders, attracting support, among others, from the National Institutes of Health, the Texas Advanced Research Program, the Texas Alzheimer Research and Care Consortium, the Alzheimer Association, the Kleberg foundation, the Amon Carter foundation and the Gillson-Longenbaugh foundation. Currently his lab is funded through 3 R01 grants from NIH/NIA. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers in testimony of the robust impact of his research. Further supporting the impact of his research, in 2022 Dr. Taglialatela was awarded the prestigious Alzheimer Prize by the IOS press for the most influential paper published in 2021, as ranked by peer scientists. He further was invited to deliver talks at national and international institutions and scientific meetings. He served on several national and international grant review panels, and served as permanent appointed member and chair of the Clinical Neuroscience & Neurodegeneration study section at the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Taglialatela is also actively involved in teaching to medical and graduate school students. He served for several years as the co-director of the molecules, cells and tissues course, associate director of the Neuroscience Graduate Program, and currently is the director of the UTMB Neuroscience Summer Undergraduate Research Program while teaching the full human gross anatomy laboratory and several classes to both the medical and graduate school. Notably, in January 2021, Dr. Taglialatela was appointed Dean ad interim of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, a service he completed in February 2022.

In addition of being appointed Dean ad interim, for his services to the research and educational mission of UTMB, over the years Dr. Taglialatela has received numerous awards, including, in 2013, both the highest awards conferred to a UTMB graduate faculty, the distinguished faculty service award and the graduate student organization distinguished teaching award. Other awards include the neuroscience teaching excellence award (2010; 2014), Dept. of Neurology professionalism award (2015), appointment to Mace Bearer at the 2012 UTMB graduate school commencement and again the graduate student organization distinguished teaching award in 2023, one of the only two faculty at UTMB receiving this prestigious award twice.