Elisabetta Volpe graduated and trained for a PhD course in Immunology in the laboratory of Molecular Pathology at the University of Tor Vergata (Rome, Italy), where she studied the human macrophage and dendritic cell responses to mycobacterial infection, combining molecular, cellular, and microbiological approaches.

From 2006 to 2009 doctor Volpe worked in the Department of Immunology at the Curie Institute (Paris, France) as post-doc researcher. In these years she studied the role of inflammatory cytokines in health and disease. In particular she was focused on the study of T helper (Th)17 responses, implicated in the development of autoimmune diseases. She studied the conditions inducing human Th17 cell differentiation by using biological and bioinformatics tools. In 2010 Elisabetta Volpe came back to Italy at the Santa Lucia Foundation (Rome, Italy), where she developed projects concerning the study of immunological networks implicated in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis, by transferring all knowledge acquired during her previous experiences.

Since 2019 Elisabetta Volpe is director of Molecular Neuroimmunology Laboratory of Santa Lucia Foundation (Rome, Italy) and her team work on the mechanisms regulating induction and function of cytokines involved in neuroinflammation. In particular, they identified the inflammatory features of interleukin-17, and the immunoregulatory role of interleukin-9. In the last years, her research is focused on the study of neuroinflammation in neurological diseases, such as multiple sclerosis and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and neuropsychiatric diseases, such as autism.