Salvatore La Rosa, PhD, serves as the Chief Scientific Officer at the Children?s Tumor Foundation (CTF) and he is responsible for the implementation of the Foundation?s business strategy into research projects. He manages the foundation?s research activities, providing scientific and knowledgeable review of discovery, preclinical and early development programs in the field of Neurofibromatosis (NF). Dr. La Rosa is responsible for the development and management of novel partnerships and initiatives with academic research groups and biotech/pharma companies which could address unmet needs in the field. Besides the activities of compound scouting and grants management, he is involved in ad-hoc collaborative research programs, CRO selection and management, as well as preclinical testing consortia and the implementation of a data-sharing platform for NF in collaboration with Sage Bionetworks and other NF funders. He has co-authored more than 30 peer-review research articles and in previous jobs served as Group Leader and Project Leader for Siena Biotech (Italy), Nikem Research (Italy) and Evotec (UK) leading projects in the area of neurodegeneration and oncology. He holds a Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow (Scotland, UK) and MSc in Organic Chemistry from the University of Messina (Italy).