Franca Ronchese

Franca Ronchese is an Italian-New Zealand immunologist. She currently leads the immune cell biology programme at the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research in Wellington, New Zealand and is a research professor at Victoria University of Wellington.

Career
After a PhD at the University of Padua, Italy, Ronchese worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Ronald Germain at the National Institutes of Health in the United States. After her postdoctoral studies, she joined the Basel Institute for Immunology, Switzerland, where she became interested in antigen presentation by dendritic cells in vivo. In 1994, Ronchese moved to New Zealand to establish her research programme at the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research, with a focus on developing immune therapies for cancer and allergies. Her current research focuses on dendritic cells (a kind of immune cell), and includes allergic response work.

In 2012, Ronchese was a finalist in the NEXT Woman of the Year. In 2018, she was invited to give the Australian and New Zealand Society for Immunology's Burnet Oration.

Personal life
Ronchese is married to Graham Le Gros, research director of the Malaghan Institute.