Chiara Ciccarelli completed her undergraduate and master studies at Tor Vergata University in Rome in 2008. She received her PhD from Cambridge in 2012 and from 2012 to 2016 she held a Junior Research Fellowship at Gonville and Caius College. In November 2016 she started her research group at the Cavendish Laboratory with a Winton Advanced Research Fellowship, in October 2017 she became Royal Society University Research Fellow. Since October 2019 she is a Harding Lecturer.