Maria-Paola Forte received her BSc degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Genova in 2015 with the thesis "Crowd Motion Analysis using Optical Flow."

Forte earned her MSc degree in Bioengineering (Technologies for Electronics) at Politecnico di Milano in 2018. During her master's degree, she participated in an exchange program at the University of Queensland (Brisbane). Her master's thesis research, "Robust Visual Augmented Reality in Robot-Assisted Surgery," was conducted at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems under the supervision of Dr. Katherine J. Kuchenbecker. 

Forte is currently an IMPRS-IS Ph.D. Candidate in the Haptic Intelligence Department led by Dr. Katherine J. Kuchenbecker and in the Perceiving Systems Department led by Dr. Michael J. Black.

Forte's research aims to create technology that assists people. She is primarily interested in the development of assistive technology devices for people with sensory or motor deficits. Her Ph.D. project focuses on sign language reconstruction and recognition. Forte is also interested in investigating how technology enhances performance in highly specialized tasks, such as robotic surgery. Forte's research combines vision-based and sensor-based approaches, and it spans the reality–virtuality continuum.