Speakers

Rosario Rizzuto is Full Professor of General Pathology at the Department of Biomedical Sciences. He completed his Medical degree (1986) and his PhD in Biology and molecular pathology (1991) at the University of Padova. After two years as research associate at the University of Padova (1991-1992), he became Professor at the University of Ferrara (1992-2008) and then came back to University of Padova as Full Professor in 2008.
His research activity focuses on the study of the mitochondrial calcium uniporter (MCU), the Ca2+ uptake pathway of mitochondria identified in 2011 by his research group. This research has been supported by grants from different national programs and foundations (e.g., Telethon) as well as from the ERC, which funded the Advanced grant MitoCALCIUM (2012-2017). He has also been awarded several national and international prizes, including the Chiara D’Onofrio prize, the Biotec Award, the Theodor Bucher medal, and in 2014 the Antonio Feltrinelli prize by the Accademia dei Lincei. He published 238 papers in peer-reviewed journals, 14 book chapters and over 200 meeting abstracts.

Raymond Schiffelers studied Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences at Leiden University (1990-1995). After an industrial traineeship at SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals (UK) he did his PhD in medical microbiology at Erasmus University Rotterdam on liposomal targeting of antimicrobial agents (1996-2001). Subsequently he became post-doc at Utrecht University working on liposomes targeting tumor vasculature. In 2002-2003, at Intradigm Co (USA) he expanded his tumor vasculature-targeting work with polymers for delivery of siRNA. After his return to Utrecht University he became assistant and then associate professor. He co-invented OncoCort® a nanomedicine formulation of corticosteroids that will enter clinical trials in 2015. In 2011, he moved to the Laboratory for Clinical Chemistry & Hematology of the University Medical Center Utrecht to work on nanomedicines, both for diagnosis and therapy. In particularly, he focuses on extracellular vesicles in the circulation as inspiration for new drug delivery systems and diagnostic readouts. He is founding member of the International Society for Extracellular Vesicles (ISEV) founding member and member organizing committee for the ISEV2014-annual meeting, Associate Editor of the Journal Extracellular Vesicles and editor of the International Journal of Pharmaceutics and the Journal of Controlled Release. He is Founder of EXCYTEX-an extracellular vesicle-based company and member of the Scientific Advisory Board for a number of start-up companies.

Olivia Merkel studied pharmacy in Marburg, Germany, and became a Board Registered Pharmacist in 2005. She received a MS in Pharmaceutical Technology from Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg in 2006 and a Ph.D. (summa cum laude) from Philipps-Universität Marburg in 2009. After 2 years as a postdoctoral lecturer at Philipps-Universität Marburg, she joined Wayne State University in Detroit, MI, as an Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences in 2011 and became an Associate Faculty Member of Oncology and Scientific Member of Karmanos Cancer Institute in 2012. After obtaining an ERC grant from the European Research Council, she accepted a position as Professor for Drug Delivery at LMU Munich and headed 2 laboratories in Detroit and Munich until 2017. She is the president of the German Chapter of the Controlled Release Society and the Chair of the CRS Transdermal and Mucosal Delivery Focus Group. She has obtained numerous awards for her research, such as the APV Research Award, Galenus Foundation Technology Award, and Carl-Wilhelm- Scheele-Award. She is an Editorial Board Member of the Journal of Controlled Release, the European Journal of Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics, Molecular Pharmaceutics, was an NIH reviewer and currently is a standing member of the Swiss NSF Review Board. Her research is focused on pulmonary delivery of nucleic acids for the treatment of inflammatory, cancerous and infectious lung diseases with a current emphasis on developing inhalable siRNA based antivirals.

Paolo Decuzzi is a Senior Scientist and the Founding Director of the Laboratory of Nanotechnology for Precision Medicine at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genova – Italy. Dr. Decuzzi earned his M.Sc. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Bari (Italy) in 1997 and his Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Naples – Federico II (Italy) in 2001, with a thesis on friction and adhesion at the nanoscale. In 2002, he was nominated Assistant Professor of Machine Design at the Polytechnic University of Bari and, in 2005, he became Associate Professor in the School of Medicine of the University ‘Magna Graecia’ of Catanzaro. There, he co-founded BioNEM - the laboratory of BioNanotechnology and Engineering for Medicine - one of the first nano-engineering laboratories built in a School of Medicine, worldwide. In October 2007, he joined The University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston as an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering. In October 2010, he moved to the Houston Methodist Hospital where he served as a Professor of Biomedical Engineering till July 2015. There, he founded the Center for the Rational Design of Multifunctional Nanoconstructs, with the financial support of the Cancer Prevention and Research Center of Texas and the US National Cancer Institute; and served first as the co-Chair of the Nanomedicine Department and then as the interim Chair of the Translational Imaging Department. In July 2014, Dr. Decuzzi was awarded a European Research Council “Consolidator Grant” to design, synthesize and develop nanoconstructs for imaging and therapy in brain cancer. In July 2015, he joined the Italian Institute of Technology in Genova.
Dr. Decuzzi has been a visiting scientist at the Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor (1998, 1999 and 2001); and a visiting professor at the Princeton Materials Institute – Princeton (2003); the Heart and Lung Institute at the Ohio State University (2003 and 2004); the University of Texas Health Science Center (2006); and the Radiology Department at Stanford Medicine (2018, 2019, 2020, 2021).

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