Prof. Dr. Maria Domenica Cappellini is a Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Milan and has been Chief of the Rare Diseases Centre at the Fondazione IRCCS Policlinico Hospital, Milan, since October 2019. She qualified as an MD in 1974 at the University of Milan, Italy, and then underwent specialized training in Gastroenterology and Hematology. She has also trained at the Pasteur Institut, Paris, France, and in the Department of Genetics at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. She has been a Research Fellow in the Molecular Hematology Unit at the MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, Oxford University, and the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, UK. She is a member of several societies, including the European Haematology Association (EHA) and the American Society of Hematology (ASH). She is a scientific advisor to the Thalassaemia International Federation (TIF) and contributes to establishing guidelines for the clinical management of thalassemia. She is a past president of the European Federation of Internal Medicine (EFIM) and a current member of the European School Haematology (ESH) Strategy Board in Paris and EHA’s Fellowships & Grants Committee, EHA2018. She is also an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) and the American College of Physicians (ACP). She received a Sultan Bin Khalifa Grand International Thalassemia Award in 2015, “Precious Rubies” from TIF in 2015, and the Statton Medal from ASH in 2020.