Francesca Granucci obtained the PhD in Pharmacology and toxicology in 1996. She then performed the Post doc at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute – Boston. From 1997 to 2001 she worked as researcher at the Italian National Research in Milan and from 2001 to 2006 she worked as researcher at the University of Milano-Bicocca. In 2006 she obtained a position as Associate Professor and in 2016 as Full Professor at the University of Milano-Bicocca. She has pioneered systems biology approaches to study complex dynamic processes, such as host-pathogen interactions, the process of dendritic cell maturation and the role of dendritic cells in activating and controlling NK cell functions. More recently she focused her research activity on signalling events downstream of CD14/TLR4 within cells of the mammalian innate immune system and she identified some of the key functions played by the NFATc family of transcription factors activated in dendritic cells in response to PRR agonists.
Susana Rocha obtained her PhD in Chemistry in 2014 and is Associate Professor at KU Leuven, where she leads a multidisciplinary research group working at the interface of materials science and biology. Her research focuses on developing advanced fluorescence microscopy tools and engineering 3D in vitro models to study how cells interact with synthetic biomaterials, such as nanoparticles and hydrogels. These models aim to better mimic the native tissue environment and are crucial for understanding nanoparticle behavior in complex systems. By improving the physiological relevance of preclinical testing, Rocha’s work contributes to the optimization of nanomedicines and lays the foundation for more effective, personalized therapies."
Talk title: Nanoparticles Under the Microscope: The Power of 3D Models
Thomas J. Webster’s (H index: 121; Google Scholar) degrees are in chemical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh (B.S., 1995; USA) and in biomedical engineering from RPI (Ph.D., 2000; USA). He has served as a professor at Purdue (2000-2005), Brown (2005-2012), and Northeastern (2012-2021; serving as Chemical Engineering Department Chair from 2012 - 2019) Universities and has formed over a dozen companies who have numerous FDA approved medical products currently improving human health in over 20,000 patients. He is currently helping those companies and serves as a professor at Brown University, Saveetha University, Vellore Institute of Technology, UFPI, and others. Dr. Webster has numerous awards including: 2020, World Top 2% Scientist by Citations (PLOS); 2020, SCOPUS Highly Cited Research (Top 1% Materials Science and Mixed Fields); 2021, Clarivate Top 0.1% Most Influential Researchers (Pharmacology and Toxicology); 2022, Best Materials Science Scientist by Citations (Research.com); and is a fellow of over 8 societies. Prof. Webster is a former President of the U.S. Society For Biomaterials and has over 1,350 publications to his credit with over 55,000 citations. He was recently nominated for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Larysa studied Physics at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (Ukraine) from 1999 to 2005, where she got her Master of Science degree. For her PhD she worked in the area of soft condensed matter systems with colloidal particles at the University of Konstanz (Germany), with Prof. Paul Leiderer. In January 2009, she joined the group of Prof. Jerome Bibette at the Ecole superieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles de la Ville de Paris as a Post Doc. There she was working on the development of an innovative millifluidic platform for microbiological assays.
She moved to Dresden in 2011, where she worked at the integration of miniaturized sensors into microfluidic lab-on-a-chip systems first, in the Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research Dresden (director Prof. Oliver Schmidt), and then at the TU Dresden in the group of Prof. Gianaurelio Cuniberti.
Her research activities include multiple aspects in materials science and nanoelectronics, e.g. novel artificially designed micro-machines and ultra-sensitive nanosensors integrated in microfluidic systems. In 2020 she became an independent group leader at the Helmholtz Center HZDR.
Professor Elena Cattaneo is Director of the Laboratory of Stem Cell Biology and Pharmacology of Neurodegenerative Diseases at the Department of Pharmacological Sciences, as well as a co-founder and first appointed Director of UniStem, the Centre for Stem Cell Research of the University of Milano. The main research theme of her lab is neural stem cells, and the molecular pathophysiology of Huntington’s Disease.
Funders of Prof Cattaneo's lab include the Huntington's Disease Society of America (H.D.S.A.), Hereditary Disease Foundation,High Q Foundation, the European Union (through EuroStemCell, NeuroStemcell, ESTOOLS, NeuroNE, STEM-HD and Stem-stroke projects), Fondazione Cariplo, and Telethon Italy.
Prof Cattaneo is a Coalition Investigator of the Huntington's Disease Society of America (H.D.S.A.), and a member of the Board of Directors of several European consortia (including EuroStemCell and NeuroNE). She acts as a reviewer for several journals (including Science, Nature Neuroscience, Nature Genetics, and Journal of Neuroscience) and international funding agencies, and is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Hereditary Disease Foundation and of the Euro-HD Network.
Prof Cattaneo's studies on neural stem cells and Huntington's disease saw her awarded the “Le Scienze” Price for Medicine and a Gold Medal from the President of the Italian Republic in 2001. In 2005 she was awarded the Marisa Bellisario and Chiara D’Onofrio prizes, in 2006 was nominated Cavaliere Ufficiale (Knight) of the Italian Republic, and in 2013 was appointed senator for life by Italy's president, Giorgio Napolitano. She was also named Stem Cell Person of the Year in 2013 by Paul Knoepfler and the readers of his blog, and awarded the ISSCR Public Service Award in 2014, with Paolo Bianco and Michele De Luca, for "their recent involvement in public debate and policy-making in Italy, championing rigorous scientific and medical standards and stringent regulatory oversight in the introduction of new stem cell treatments into the clinic."
Prof Cattaneo has published 105 papers in peer-reviewed journals, has given more than 200 invited lectures, and is very active in organizing professional development and outreach events - for both the scientific community and lay public.
Yurii K. Gun’ko received his MSc and Ph.D. degrees in Chemistry from Moscow State University in 1987 and 1990, respectively. He then worked as a lecturer at the Belarus Institute of Technology, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Sussex (UK), and the Universities of Göttingen and Magdeburg (Germany). In 1999, he was appointed as a Lecturer in Inorganic Chemistry at Trinity College Dublin, later promoted to Associate Professor, and finally appointed to the 1922 Chair in 2014. His main research interests and activities are in the areas of quantum dots, chiral nanomaterials, plasmonic and magnetic nanostructures for potential biomedical applications. Professor Gun'ko has over 268 peer reviewed journal publications, 10 peer reviewed conference proceedings and written one book and 11 book chapters to date.
Keynote Tak title: Engineering Chirality at the Nanoscale for Bio-Selective Interactions
Lucia Gemma Delogu, Ph.D., is the head of the ImmuneNano-Lab at the Department of Biomedical Sciences of the University of Padua (UNIPD Padua, Italy) www.delogulab.eu. After acquiring her experience in Immunology and Material Science at the University of Southern California (Los Angeles, USA) and at Sanford-Burnham Institute (San Diego, USA), she served as Assistant Professor at the University of Sassari (Italy) and as Visiting Professor at the Technische Universität Dresden (TUD; Dresden, Germany).
Dr. Delogu has been the Scientific Coordinator of two interdisciplinary EU projects, under HORIZON2020, including a RISE project on nanomedicine and immune interactions of nanomaterials, involving more than 10 leading Institutions and high-profile international scientists on nanotechnology and nanomedicine. In this field, she has received several awards, including the “Marie S. Curie Individual Fellow” at TUD under HORIZON2020 from the European Commission, the “200 Young Best Talents of Italy 2011” from the Italian Ministry of Youth, and “Bedside to Bench & Back Award” from the National Institutes of Health, USA. Since 2020, Dr. Delogu is in charge of the Italian chapter and a member of the road map working group of the Advanced Material Global Pandemic & Future Preparedness Taskforce (AMPT) www.amptnetwork.com/. She introduced the “NanoImmunity-by-design” concept, for the design of nanomaterials based not solely on their physicochemical characteristics but also on their immunomodulatory characteristics.
She pioneered the use of systems immunology approach by high-dimensional single-cell strategies in the context of nanomaterial applications. Her research focuses on the biological interactions of nanomaterials and nanoparticles, with a particular focus on their immunomodulation properties, biomedical applications and toxicological profile.
Professor Riccarda Antiochia received an MSc degree in Chemistry with honors in 1992 and an MSc degree in Pharmacy with honors in 2009, both at the Sapienza University of Rome. In 1994 she received a Diploma of Imperial College from Imperial College, London, and in 1996 received a PhD in Chemical Sciences from the Sapienza University of Rome. In 2018 she was awarded the national scientific qualification as Full Professor for the scientific sector CHIM/01, Analytical Chemistry. She is a Member of the Steering Committee of CNIS, Research Center for Biotechnology, applied to Engineering of the Sapienza University of Rome from 2011, and a Member of the PNIEC-PNRR Technical Committee of the Ministry of Environment and Energetic Security (MASE) for the environmental impact assessment of projects from Integrates National Energy and Climate Plan (PNIEC) and National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) since April 2022. She is author of more than110 papers in international peer-reviewed scientific journals, 3 book chapters and 1 mono- graph.
Her scientific activity is focused on the fields of biotechnology, nanotechnology and analytical chemistry. Her main area of research is the design and development of electrochemical (bio) sensors for clinical applications. More recently, she has been involved in the characterization of new nanostructured materials for electrode modification in second- and third-generation electro- chemical biosensors, biofuel cells and microneedle-based bio- sensor development.
Professor Alessandro Porchetta is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Rome "Tor Vergata," leading the Laboratory of Sensing and Biomimetic Systems. His research specializes in DNA/RNA-based nanodevices for biosensing and molecular diagnostics, with notable work on DNA nanoswitches, CRISPR-Cas12a activators, and electrochemical platforms. His lab is currently involved as Principal Investigator in major research projects such as the EU Marie Skłodowska-Curie RISE “Nano-OligoMed” as well as a university scholarship program “MIRA”.
Eugenio Martinelli is Full Professor in the Department of Electronic Engineering at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, where he leads the Bioinspired Electronic Engineering Group. He is also the founder and co-director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Organ-on-Chip and Lab-on-Chip Applications (IC-LOC).
He has served as Principal Investigator of numerous national and international research projects (Italian Space Agency, Fondazione Veronesi, H2020, NIH, among others), focusing on the development of sensor systems and data analysis methods for applications in space, food science, and biomedicine. Notably, Dr. Martinelli was responsible for two space experiments conducted on the International Space Station during the ENEIDE (2005) and DAMA (2010) missions.
He has authored more than 270 publications in international journals and conferences (over 7,000 citations, h-index 44, Scopus) and is the inventor of nine patents. In recognition of his contributions, he received several awards, including the EUROSENSORS Fellowship Award (2016) for outstanding achievements in signal processing and data analysis for sensor applications.
Talk title: Sensing in Organ-on-Chip: Bioinspired Strategies
Luisa Torsi is internationally renowned as a pioneer in bio-organic electronic sensors and elected member of the Accademia dei Lincei. She earned a degree in Physics and a PhD in Chemistry from the Uni-versity of Bari, where she has served as Full Professor of Analytical Chemistry since the age of 40. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at Bell Labs in the U.S., she developed an interdisciplinary research approach that integrates electronic devices, analytical chemistry, and organic semiconductors. She also held a position as adjunct professor at Åbo Akademi University in Finland and currently occupies leadership roles, including Vice President of the Scientific Council of the National Research Council (CNR) and President of ARTI Puglia, the regional agency for innovation and technology transfer.
Torsi has received numerous international accolades: she was the first woman to receive the Heinrich Emanuel Merck Award for Analytical Sciences and she was also awarded the Exner Medal. She was awarded the prestigious President of the Republic Prize by the Accademia dei Lincei in 2023. In 2025, she has also been awarded an honorary doctorate from Åbo Akademi University. She is also a Fellow of both the Materials Research Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry and was also the first woman elected President of the European Materials Rese-arch Society.
With over 280 scientific publications, approximately 19,000 citations, and 14 patents (10 granted), Torsi ranks among the top 0.58% most-cited chemists in the world, according to ScholarGPS®. She has given more than 200 invited talks, including over 60 plenary lectures.
She has led numerous national and EU-funded research projects, including SiMoT, a platform for ultra-sensitive biomarker detection applied to early cancer diagnosis and viral screening such as COVID-19. She currently coordinates a project focused on detecting Xylella in olive trees in Apulia. Her dedication also extends to science communication and the promotion of women in STEM—through TEDx talks, the 100Esperte initiative, and even a feature in the Italian Topolino magazine, where she appeared as “Louise Torduck,” a successful scientist from Calisota Valle;
Website: https://www.uniba.it/docenti/torsi-luisa
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0798-0780
Researcher ID & Scopus ID: G-9065-2011; 7005294241
Dr. Mª del Carmen Blanco López is Full Professor of Analytical Chemistry at the University of Oviedo, Spain. She has worked on the design of electrochemical sensors for the detection of pharmaceuticals and tumor biomarkers. In these fields, he has synthesized molecularly imprinted polymers as antibody-mimetic affinity receptors. Her actual research lines involve the development of biosensors based on lateral flow immunoassays (LFIA). Nanomaterials of different natures are being explored to develop methods to reduce false negatives and enable quantification through a physicochemical property. In this field, she has succeeded in coupling optical, magnetic and electrochemical transducers by selecting the appropriate nanoparticles, nanovesicles or hybrid aggregates as immunoassay labels. She has participated in more than 30 funded research projects/contracts, which have resulted to date in approx. 100 publications.
She has been coordinator of the Marie Curie Innovative Training Network ITN- H2020 Break Biofilms project (www.breakbiofilms.com), and a national network on Bioapplications of Nanoparticles (NanoBioAp). She has participated in evaluation committees of European projects of the FET-Open and Pathfinder calls, the European Space Agency calls, and other international evaluation agencies. She is a member of the National Association of Analytical Chemistry, the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Spanish Group of Research in Extracellular Vesicles (GEIVEX).