Maurizio Zazzi is Associate Professor of Microbiology at the Department of Medical Biotechnology of the University of Siena. He is a recognized expert in virology, particularly antiviral drug development and resistance. He has been working on HIV drug resistance for more than 25 years taking part or leading many international consortia. In the last ten years he has worked in antiviral drug discovery and development together with experts in medicinal chemistry, expanding his area of interest to flaviviruses and more recently to SARS-CoV-2. Funding in this area includes grants from the European Commission FP6 and H2020 programmes, from the Italian Ministry of University and Research and from Tuscany Region. He is a member of the Steering Committee of the Italian Society for Virology and the Italian delegate for the European Society for Antiviral Research. His publication track record includes >240 papers indexed in Pubmed, the current H index is 32