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Valeria ChionoThe coordinatorBiographyValeria Chiono has a Master Degree in Chemical Engineering cum laude (2001) and a PhD in Chemical and Materials Engineering from the University of Pisa, Italy (2006). She is currently Full Professor at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering of Politecnico di Torino, Italy, where she has been working first as a Post-doctoral fellow (2007-2012) and then as a researcher (2012-2015). Her research is aimed at the design of innovative bioengineering approaches to solve key problems in regenerative medicine and nanomedicine, and spans the development of bioactive materials and interfaces, tissue engineering, materials characterization, in vitro tissue models, drug delivery and nanomedicine for RNA therapy. One main research interest is cardiac regenerative medicine. She has been the coordinator of several research projects, including a FIRB project financed by the Italian government on the preparation of biomimetic scaffolds for cell therapy using human cardiac progenitor cells. Additionally, she has been participating to different EU projects, such as Rebiostent project on the development of biomimetic coatings for polymeric stents and HyMedPoly project on the preparation and characterization of intrinsically antibacterial substrates for wound healing. Currently, she is collaborating to 2020-NMBP-TR-IND-2018 - Project EVPRO ( http://www.evpro-implant.eu/) to the development of an in vitro bone model for testing anti-inflammatory devices. Her highest achievement has been the granting of the ERC Consolidator project BIORECAR (contract number: 772168) on advanced strategies for heart regeneration by stimulating direct reprogramming of human cardiac fibroblasts into cardiomyocytes through a multifunctional biomaterial platform. Moreover, she is the coordinator of PoC Instrument Project "POLHYGENTH", a 9-months project financed by Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo-Links, aimed at TRL increase of miRcombo-based nanoparticles developed in BIORECAR project. She is also one of the partners of SaveAR AFM-Telethon project aimed at the development of a miRNA-based treatment for spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy (SBMA, also known as Kennedy's disease, OMIM 313200). She is author of 127 scientific publications (H-index: 35, Scopus Source; 39, Google Scholar) and 5 patents in the field of biomaterials, tissue engineering and nanomedicine. The last patent, submitted thanks to results from BIORECAR project, is going to be exploited for the next establishment of a spin-off company called POLHYRNATECH. On 17 Nov. 2022, she got the "3rd Place Award - Women Innovators at RIS 2022, EIT Manufacturing" on POLHYRNATECH technology for the preparation of polymer-lipid hybrid nanocarriers for RNA therapy, developed in BIORECAR project and further advanced in POLHYGENTH project. She is lecturer of "Regenerative Medicine Engineering", "Cell and Tissue Engineering" and "Laboratory of Tissues and Physiological Processes' Models" courses at Politecnico di Torino. She is Specialty Editor-in-chief of Frontiers in Biomaterials Science, "Bioinspired and Complex Materials section", Editor-in-chief of Biomedical Science and Engineering - Page Press and executive board member of Biomedical Materials - IOP science. Since 2018, she manages Politecnico di Torino Unit within Centro 3R, Interuniversity Center for the Promotion of the Principles of the 3Rs in Teaching and Research (www.centro3R.it) while since 2021 she is Deputy-Director of Centro3R. Prof. Valeria Chiono |