A graduate of the University of Genoa’s Faculty of Medicine, he continued his medical training in the United States at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, with a fellowship in infectious diseases.

From 2011 to 2019, he was Director of the Infectious Diseases Clinic of the Santa Maria della Misericordia Hospital of the University Hospital of Udine. Today he is Director of the Infectious Diseases Department of Regione Liguria, Director of the Infectious Diseases Clinic of the IRCCS San Martino Hospital in Genoa and full professor of Infectious Diseases at the University of Genoa.

Matteo Bassetti is president of the Study Group on Critical Illness of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID), president of the Italian Society of Infectious Therapy (SITA) and member of the Italian Ministry of Health’s Executive Committee for Combating Antimicrobial Resistance (PNCAR). Since 2019, he has been a board member of the International Sepsis forum (ISF) and since 2022 he has been a spokesperson for the Italian Society of Scientists (ISA).

He is on the editorial board of several prestigious international journals and is the author of numerous scientific papers and three essays for the general public: Una lezione da non dimenticare. Cronaca della battaglia per sconfiggere il Covid-19 senza panico né catastrofismo [A lesson not to be forgotten. Chronicle of the battle to defeat Covid-19 without panicking or catastrophizing] (Cairo, 2020), Il mondo è dei microbi [The world of microbes] (Piemme, 2022) and Pinocchi in camice. Sulla salute non si scherza [Pinocchios in button-downs. There’s nothing funny about health] (Piemme, 2023). He is also author and star of the podcast Salute Al Var.

With the experience of the Covid-19 pandemic that led him to manage, in addition to his team of emotionally and physically exhausted doctors and nurses, more than 2500 patients and their frightened and grieving relatives, Matteo Bassetti brings to workplaces his own experience as the coordinator of a large team that from one day to the next found itself facing a more complex and uncertain situation than it had been prepared for, dealing with issues such as the management of panic, fear, the unknown and the uncertain, coordination and leadership within heterogeneous groups and the importance of knowing how to make decisions. This is in addition to the importance of instilling positive and constructive messages when dealing with uncertainty, difficulty, fatigue, frustration and limited or fewer resources than necessary.