Professor Vasilev is currently a Matthew Flinders Professor and a Professor of Biomedical Nanotechnology in the College of Medicine and Public Health at Flinders University. He is also the Director of the Biomedical Nanoengineering Laboratory, which he established after joining Flinders University. Prior to taking a position at Flinders University, Professor Vasilev had built and led at The University of South Australia (UniSA) a large and highly productive team, which grew to more than 20 postdocs and PhD students, a size of a small research centre. His team is well connected having deep collaborative networks within Australia and internationally, and is strongly engaged with industry, end users, government agencies and community. Professor Vasilev has attracted in excess of 25M dollars in research funding from Government competitive grants and Industry, published more than 300 papers and has been awarded several prestigious Research Fellowships from ARC, NHMRC and the Humboldt Foundation, and other awards such as the John A. Brodie Medal for achievements in Chemical Engineering in 2016, the election of a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) in 2017 and a Fellow of the International Association of Advanced Materials in 2022. His contribution to UniSA has been recognised by several awards including the UniSA Research Excellence Award in the Mid-Career category (2018), and the Division of ITEE Excellence Award for Leadership in Research (2018), and the UniSA Interdisciplinary Award (2019) for his work across disciplines. The foundation of Professor Vasilev’s research program is his revolutionary approach to the nanoengineering of plasma polymer films, which vastly expanded the opportunities for this technology. His established international reputation and leadership in his field evident (in addition to the awards mentioned above) by regular invitations to deliver plenary and keynote lectures at international conferences, and prestigious universities, institutes and companies around the world. His publications have been cited more than 12,500 times and his H-index = 63 (M-index ~ 3). Professor Vasilev’s research has a strong translational focus. He has a track record of working with commercial partners to industrialise biomedical technologies. These include leading large commercial projects such as a $5M CRC-P project together with Motherson Australia Pty Ltd on a technology for bladder cancer diagnostics, a $6M IMCRC project with Corin Group on antibacterial surface modification for orthopaedic implants, and a $1.3M project with Anizop Holdings on antibacterial surface modification for dental implants. His translational work involving the entire spectrum of activities from research discoveries to commercial products was a key strength allowing him to win in 2020 (commenced in 2022) the prestigious and highly competitive NHMRC Investigator Award ($2,738,000 over 5 year). Professor Vasilev is deeply involved with various research funding bodies, currently being a member (by invitation) of the Australian Research Council (ARC) Medical Research Advisory Group, NHMRC GRP (Grant Review Panel), a member of the Advisory Committee of the Australia-India Scientific Research Fund and a member of the College of Assessors of the New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment Science Funding, amongst others. He is also a member of Brandon Capital BioCatalyst Investment Review Committee
Dr Nathalie Mignet is Research Director at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France. She is the leader of the Laboratory Chemical and Biological Technologies for Health located at Université de Paris Cité, at the faculty of Pharmacy.
After a PhD in France in organic chemistry, Dr Mignet was hired by the company Lynx Therapeutics in San Francisco. She then joined the University of Sheffield in UK for one year before being hired by the French biotech company Capsulis to work on onion-based nanoparticles called spherulites. She joined the CNRS as a research Scientist in 2000 to work on non-viral gene delivery. Since then, she expanded her domain of interest from drug delivery systems to nanomedicine designed for triggered delivery or imaging.
With her lab (#Mignet Lab), she is interested in nanomedicine for delivery or imaging going from fundamental to preclinical studies mostly in cancer.
She is also the founder and the former president of the French Society for Nanomedecine, SFNano.
Recent articles:
Dr. Gerardo F. Goya currently holds the position of Associate Professor at the University of Zaragoza, Spain. He earned his PhD degree from the University of La Plata, Argentina. From 2001 to 2007, he served as an Associate Professor at the Institute of Physics, University of Sao Paulo (Brazil), where he established and managed the mechanochemistry laboratory within the Materials Physics Department (DFMT). Upon joining the Institute of Nanoscience of Aragón (INA) at the University of Zaragoza in 2005, he initiated and consolidated a new research direction focusing on nanomagnetism and the biomedical applications of nanoparticles (NPs), particularly magnetic hyperthermia. Notable achievements during this period include the development of novel synthesis methods for magnetic NPs with enhanced control over size and magnetic properties. Additionally, he successfully demonstrated the 'Trojan Horse strategy' for oncologic therapy by inducing cell death with magnetic hyperthermia in dendritic-cell primary cultures. He conducted several studies investigating the interaction between magnetic NPs and various biological agents. In terms of technological advancements, Professor Goya led the design, development, and construction of unique equipment for measuring power absorption in magnetic hyperthermia. This pioneering system, incorporating numerous technological enhancements, was designed to function as a fully automatic measuring platform. The innovative developments of this period served as the foundation for the establishment of a spin-off company from the University of Zaragoza, where he serves as a co-founder and scientific advisor. Through collaborations with prominent parasitologists, immunologists, and medical professionals, the group has successfully established a shared platform in biomedicine, facilitating the coordination of highly innovative multinational projects.
Valentina Cauda is Associate Professor at the Department of Applied Science and Technology (DISAT), Politecnico di Torino, co-founder of the Interdepartmetal laboratory PolitoBIOMed Lab and head of the TrojaNanoHorse lab (in brief TNHLab) located at DISAT. See more details at https://areeweb.polito.it/TNHlab/.
Thanks to her ERC Starting Grant project (TrojaNanoHorse, GA 678151), started in March 2016, she now leads a multidisciplinary research group of 18 people, including chemists, biologists, physics, engineers and nanotechnologists. Her main research topic is about theranostic nanomaterials, from wet synthesis, chemical functionalization and physical-chemical characterization of metal oxide nanomaterials covered by lipidic bilayer from both artificial and natural origins, aimed for drug delivery, tumor cell targeting, bio-imaging. Metal oxide nanomaterials, like zinc oxide, mesoporous silica, titania and metal (gold, silver) nanostructures, as well as liposomes and cell-derived extracellular vesicles, are investigated.
Valentina Cauda graduated in Chemical Engineering in 2004 at Politecnico di Torino and then received her Ph.D. in Material Science and Technology in 2008. After a short period at the University of Madrid, she worked as a post-doc at the University of Munich, Germany on nanoparticles for drug delivery and tumor cell targeting. From 2010 to 2015 she worked as Senior Post Doc at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia in Torino, and then she moved, as Associate Professor, to Politecnico di Torino. For her research results she received in 2010 the prize for young researchers at the Chemistry Department of the University of Munich, in 2013 the Giovedì Scienza award, in 2015 the Zonta Prize for Chemistry, and in 2017 the USERN Prize for Biological Sciences. She has 120 scientific publications and a Hirsch Factor of 37 (updated on April 2021). She holds 6 international patents about the use of metal oxide nanoparticles in nanomedicine.
Prof. Cauda is principal investigator of several industrial, national and international projects raising more than 2 M€ funds in all. The most relevant are a recently granted FET OPEN RIA MIMIC-KeY (GA N. 964386), the ERC Proof-of-Concept XtraUS N. 957563, a Marie-Slodowska Curie Action MINT N. 842964 (where she acts as supervisor of an incoming Post-Doc from abroad), and the ERC Starting Grant Trojananohorse N. 678151
Liviu Movileanu is now a Professor of Physics at Syracuse University, Departments of Physics and Biomedical and Chemical Engineering. His expertise areas include single-molecule and membrane biophysics, chemical and synthetic biology, biosensors, and functional biomaterials. Liviu Movileanu is also affiliated with the BioInspired Institute, Syracuse, New York. Currently, his research group is funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
Prof. Jesus M de la Fuente (Barakaldo-Spain) finished his PhD work in 2003 working in the evaluation of carbohydrate-carbohydrate interactions using gold nanoparticles in the Institute of Chemical Research from CSIC. During his PhD training, he has carried out different stays in the University of Nottingham (UK), University of Kalmar (Sweden), Institute of Physical-Chemistry “Rocasolano”-CSIC (Madrid, Spain) and National Centre of Biotechnology-CSIC (Madrid, Spain). With all this research, he was a pioneer in the emerging field of Glyconanotechnology. Once he obtained his PhD, he moved to the Centre for Cell Engineering University of Glasgow (UK) to develop a research project involving the nanoparticles development and its biological application during two years. In July 2005, he went back to the Institute of Chemical Research (Seville, Spain). His research was oriented to the vectorization of paramagnetic nanoparticles with biologically relevant carbohydrates to label and visualize brain tumors. In June 2007, Dr de la Fuente established the Nanotherapy and Nanodiagnostic Group at the Institute of Nanoscience of Aragon (University of Zaragoza, Spain). Dr. de la Fuente has supervised 14 PhD students (to completion) and he is presently supervising 12 PhD students. Since then, Dr de la Fuente has created a large research group with outstanding scientific results and excellence research projects. As principle investigator, he has received a European Research Council-Starting Grant for “Multifunctional Magnetic Nanoparticles: Towards Smart Drugs Design-NANOPUZZLE” (2010-2015), a European Research Council-Proof of Concept-HOTFLOW (2017-2018) and ERANET project “Multifunctional Gold Nanoparticles for Gene-Therapy-NANOTRUCK” (2009-2012), he is PI of a FP7-NMP “Nanotherapeutics for Antibiotic Resistant Emerging Bacterial Pathogens-NAREB” (2014-2018) and he has supervised 1 IOF and 2 IEF FP7 Marie Curie Fellows and 2 IF HORIZON2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellows. He has actually 6 licensed PCT patents. To date, he has more than 160 papers, cited more than 5,600 times and with an h-factor of 40. He was awarded with the “Shanghai-1000 People Plan” in 2013 to be Chair Professor at Jiao Tong University (Shanghai, China). Since 2014, he is a Permanent Researcher at the Spanish National Research Council- Aragon Materials Science Institute (Zaragoza, Spain).
Gerard Tobías-Rossell is Investigador Científico of Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC, Spain) at the Materials Science Institute of Barcelona (ICMAB). At ICMAB he leads research on “Nanoengineering of Carbon and Inorganic Materials (NanoCIM)” since 2009; https://ssc.icmab.es/nanocim/. He holds a degree in Chemistry (2000) and PhD in Materials Science (2004). He has performed research stays at Ames Laboratory (USA) and EMAT (Belgium), and was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Oxford (2004-2009). Dr. Tobias has been involved in several research projects both at national and international level with research centres and industries. He was for instance the coordinator of the ITN project RADDEL and is currently the PI of ECIME (AEI), ERC Consolidator Grant (NEST) and ERC Proof-of-Concept (TARLIT).
Dr. Loretta L. del Mercato is Senior Researcher at Institute of Nanotechnology of CNR (CNR NANOTEC) and coordinator of the «3DCellSensing» group, since December 2018. She received her Master Degree in Biotechnology from the University of Naples “Federico II” in 2004. In 2007, she got her PhD in “Innovative Materials and Technologies” from Institute of Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies (ISUFI), University of Salento, working at the National Nanotechnology Laboratory (NNL). From January 2008-April 2010, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Phillips University of Marburg (DE). In May 2010, she moved as Junior Researcher to the Nanoscience Institute of CNR (IT). In 2015, she joined the new-funded Nanotechnology Institute of CNR (CNR NANOTEC) as Principal Investigator where she started her own research program. She is unit leader of several projects, and she was awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant in 2017 and a My First AIRC Grant in 2019, respectively. At CNR NANOTEC, Dr. del Mercato implements a highly interdisciplinary approach, spanning from Materials Science to Chemistry and Bioengineering, to address fundamental challenges in cancer-related research. Through the core expertise in biosensing, stimuli-responsive nanoparticles and biomaterials, her team develops novel approaches for studying cell-cell heterogeneity in 3D in vitro patient-matched tumor models.