Matteo Rizzi obtained his PhD at the Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research, UCL, where he applied optogenetics to the study of hippocampal circuits. He then worked at Moorfields Eye Hospital and UCL’s Institute of Ophthalmology developing gene-specific and gene agnostic treatments for retinal degeneration and at RIKEN in Tokyo, Japan where he developed vectors for modulating brain function. In 2021 he was awarded a Career Development Fellowship to set-up his lab back at IoO/Moorfields and has since been given a Lecturer position. He also holds an appointment at the Timone Neuroscience Institute in Marseille, to enable late-stage pre-clinical development in non-human primate models.