Paola Cogo is a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Udine, Italy. She is double board in Pediatrics and Anaesthesia and Critical Care and she was trained in Pediatric Intensive Care at Children Hospital of Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, USA. She worked as consultant in Pediatric Intensive Care and Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care at the Department of Pediatrics, University of Padova (1993-2001 and 2004-2010) and at Great Hormond Street Children Hospital, London, UK (2001-2003). She then covered the position of head of Anaesthesia and Cardiac Intensive care at Bambino Gesù Children Hospital from 2011 to 2016 and she is presently full professor of Pediatrics and chair of the Division of Pediatrics at the University of Udine, Italy.

She focused her research on acute lung diseases (including animal models, newborns, and adults) and on genetic mutations of lung surfactant-specific proteins. Her research group developed new methods based on stable isotope and high-resolution mass spectrometry-based approaches (targeted and untargeted) to improve the understanding of human biology on a cellular and whole-organism levels. In recent years, she focused her research on the neurological and pulmonary injuries occurring during pediatric cardiac surgery for congenital heart defects.