Former Collaborators
Maurizio Ursini has been a Laboratory Technician at the Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering "G. Natta" of the Polytechnic of Milan from 1986 to 2022. He collaborated with prof. Tullio Caronna to the synthesis of heteroaromatic compounds obtained by photochemical functionalization of heterocyclic bases and with prof. Dario Ghiringhelli to the synthesis of chiral synthons by enzymatic way. He collaborated with professors Pierangelo Metrangolo and Giuseppe Resnati to the preparation of halogen bond-based nanostructured materials. He is co-author of 22 publications in scientific journals and 1 book chapter.Maurizio retired in 2022.
Nazeeha Ayaz was born and brought up in Chennai, India. She completed her Bachelors in Biotechnology and Masters in Nanoscience and technology from Anna University. Later, she worked as a guest lecturer at Madras University in the department of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology. She has been a research fellow under Dr. Chandan Srivastava at Department of Materials Engineering and also under Dr. Ravi Sundaresan at Department of Microbiology and Cell biology, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. In 2017, Nazeeha joined SBNLab at Polimi as a PhD student. Her current research focuses on encapsulation of fluorinated compounds for imaging and drug delivery.
Nazeeha successfully defended her PhD thesis, entitled "Engineering biomimetic elastomers", in July 2022.
Lorenzo Sori obtained the degree in Biotechnologies and master degree in Industrial biotechnologies at the University of Milano-Bicocca. His master thesis project was developed at Politecnico di Milano; the research was focused on the development of a multibranched fluorinated compounds, which can be used as dual-mode imaging agents simultaneously active in 19F Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Optical Imaging. In 2018 he started the PhD in Industrial Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Politecnico di Milano. The research project consists of studying the structural and mechanical properties of an elastomeric protein short peptide dispersions by microscopy, rheology, nano-indentation and tensile strength measurements. These structural studies are corroborated by quantum-mechanical and molecular dynamics analysis.
Lorenzo successfully defended his PhD thesis, entitled "Engineering biomimetic elastomers", in November 2022.
Benedetta Bertolotti obtained her degree in industrial chemistry in the December of 2006 at Università degli Studi di Milano in Professor Berbardi’s group. She obtained a research fellowship first at Università degli Studi di Milano under the scientific guide of Prof. Francesco Molinari (2007-2008) and then in the group of Professor Zanda (2008). From 2009 she joined the group of Professor Moravcova at University of Chemistry and Technology Prague where she obtained her PhD in chemistry in 2017. She obtained her II level Master in Drug Design and Development (PSF Master) at the University of Pavia in 2020, during which she spent 6 months in Aptuit (2019). From 2020 to 2021 she worked as post-doc at Università degli Studi di Bergamo in the group of Prof. Francesca Fontana. Benedetta collaborated with the SBNLab in 2022.
Alessandro Strada was born in Pavia in 1993. He graduated in Chemistry and he obtained his Master’s degree in Organic Chemistry at the University of Pavia. After two years as research fellow, in November 2019 he started the PhD in Industrial Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Politecnico di Milano in collaboration with the National Research Council of Italy. Alessandro concluded his PhD in July 2023.
Cristina Chirizzi was born in Lecce in 1989. She studied Molecular Biotechnology in Turin, where in 2013 obtained her MS degree. Thanks to her internship in the Molecular Imaging Center (CIM) at the University of Turin, she became confident with the synthesis of 19F nano-systems for cellular labeling applications. She obtained her PhD in Medical Medicine at the University Vita-Salute San Raffaele (2018) with a doctoral thesis titled “Development and optimization of multicolor 19F-MRI for in vivo imaging of immune cells activity”. She then continued as postdoctoral fellow at the IRCCS Ospedale San Raffaele, where worked on in vitro optimization and evaluation of nanovectors for cellular labelling together with in vivo translation in neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration models. From March 2020 she is a postdoctoral researcher at the Politecnico di Milano. Her research interests are focused on development of self-assembled biomaterials and fluorinated nano-systems development for biological applications. On September 2023, Cristina left the SBN group after years of fruitful collaborations to join the IRCCS Foundation “Carlo Besta” Neurological Institute.
