Dr. Menichella. Daniela Maria received her MD and Ph.D. from the University of Milan, Italy. She was a postdoctoral fellow at  Wayne State University and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Menichella graduated from the Neurology Residency Program at Northwestern University in Chicago and she is an Associate Professor of Neurology and Pharmacology at Northwestern University. She is the director of the Peripheral Neuropathy Multidisciplinary Clinic and Director of the Charcot-Marie-Tooth Association Center for Excellence. She is actively engaged in basic science and translational research, including NIH HEAL EPIC Clinical trials. 

Dr. Menichella is the Principal Investigator of an NIH-funded laboratory that investigates the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying neuropathic pain and axonal degeneration in hereditary and acquired peripheral neuropathies with a particular focus on Painful Diabetic Neuropathy. Towards designing more effective therapeutics, Dr. Menichella’s laboratory takes advantage of an integrated approach combining pain behavioral tests, electrophysiology studies, in vitro and in vivo calcium imaging studies, confocal studies, chemogenetics, and single-cell RNA sequencing with conditional and transgenic mouse models. More recently her laboratory has been validating therapeutic targets using human tissue including DRG and skin biopsy.