Giovanni Maglia was born in Bologna, Italy, and pursued his undergraduate studies in Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of Bologna. He then moved to the United States to complete his Master’s thesis at the University of Pennsylvania. After that, Maglia earned a PhD from the University of Birmingham in the UK, where he investigated the physical mechanisms underlying the dihydrofolate reductase-catalyzed reaction.

Following a brief stint in a biophysics group at the University of Leuven in Belgium, Giovanni transitioned to the University of Oxford for a post-doctoral position in DNA nanopore sequencing. In 2008, he was honored to receive an Oxford University Merit Award.

In 2010, Giovanni started his independent research at the University of Leuven. He moved to the University of Groningen in the Netherlands in 2014 as an assistant professor and became a full professor in 2021. His independent research has been recognized with several prestigious grants, including an ERC Starting and then an ERC Consolidator Research Grant for Top Researchers in 2010 and 2016, a VICI Talent Research Grant in 2020, and a NHGRI-NIH protein sequencing grant in 2022 as the sole applicant for his “unusual talent that is not readily available in the US.”

His research interests include nanopore biophysics, single-molecule enzymology, single-molecule proteomics and sensing, as well as designing artificial transmembrane machines. In 2021, he founded Portal Biotech to commercialize his group’s proprietary nanopore technology, securing $10 million in seed investment later that year. Maglia currently serves as the Chief Scientific Officer at Portal Biotech.