Research interests

Over the years, Caterina’s research activity focused on biomaterials, mainly on polymeric materials science, tissue engineering, controlled drug release and nanotechnologies. The most recent research lines focus on the design and the characterization of polymeric, nano-structured patches for the engineering of the cardiac tissue and on the development of innovative micro-nanosystems for treating genetic diseases and tumor processes. Recently, she was appointed as scientific coordinator in the transnational European project M-Era.net2 2016 (2018-2021). She has been supervisor of several degree thesis (90), and since 2002 she is conducting teaching activities within several degree courses at the School of Engineering of the University of Pisa. She is first inventor of the international patent “Polymeric scaffold for the cardiac regeneration and the protection from reperfusion damages” PCT/IB2014/0580025.

Keywords: Bio-artificial materials, nanoparticles, molecular imprinting, cardiac patch, drug release systems

Affiliations: Società Italiana Biomateriali (SIB), European Society for Biomaterials (ESB)