Speranza Rubattu is a full professor in Applied Technical Medical Sciences at the University Sapienza of Rome and a scientific consultant at the Institute IRCCS Neuromed Pozzilli (IS), Italy. She has spent several years as a research fellow at international research centers in the USA (the Cardiovascular and Hypertension Center of Cornell University Medical College–the New York Hospital, New York; the Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Cardiology, Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston; the Department of Medicine, Cardiovascular Division, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston). Her main research activities are the circulating and local tissue renin-angiotensin systems and the characterization of their role in hypertension; the characterization of the stroke-prone spontaneously hypertensive rat as an animal model of hypertension and related target organ damage; the molecular genetic bases of target organ damage in hypertension; the analysis of atrial natriuretic peptide and of its molecular variants as determinants of cardiovascular risk; and the role of mitochondrial dysfunction in the pathogenesis of hypertensive organ damage and major cardiovascular diseases (myocardial infarction, stroke, and heart failure). She is a member of the Italian Society of Hypertension, the Italian Society of Cardiology, the Italian Society of Cardiovascular Prevention and the European Society of Hypertension.