Giovanni Barbara graduated summa cum laude in medicine at the University of Bologna, Italy. He subsequently qualified in internal medicine and then gastroenterology at the same University. He was trained partly in London, UK and completed a post-doctoral research fellowship in neuro-immunology at McMaster University, Canada. Returning to Italy, he obtained a faculty position at the Department of Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology at the University of Bologna. Currently, he is involved in clinical gastroenterology diagnostic and therapeutic endoscopy, teaching and research.

Professor Barbara's main research interests relate to basic and clinical aspects of functional gastrointestinal disorders and neurogastroenterology, and he has authored more than 150 indexed peer-reviewed articles and reviews on these topics, published in various biomedical journals, including Gastroenterology, Gut, the Journal of Clinical Investigation and Trends in Pharmacological Sciences. He is, or has been, a member of the Editorial Boards of Gut, the American Journal of Gastroenterology, Neurogastroenterology and Motility, the American Journal of Physiology and other international scientific journals.

Professor Barbara has received national and international awards including those from the American Gastroenterological Association (1996), the Functional Brain Gut Research Group (1997), the European Society of Neurogastroenterology and Motility (2000) and the Master Award in Gastroenterology from the American Gastroenterological Association (2007). He is currently member of the Board of Directors of the Rome Foundation and Past-President of the European Society of Neurogastroenterology and Motility.