Pietro Cottone is a musician and a neuroscientist. He was born in Palermo, Italy. Here, he studied traditional liberal arts in high school with a focus on humanities. He continued his studies in Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Palermo and received a Ph.D. in Pharmacology at the Sapienza University of Rome. He moved to the United States in 2004 to pursue neuropsychiatric research. He is Associate Professor in the Departments of Pharmacology and Psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine, where he researches on neuropsychiatric disorders.