Valentina Castagnola

Valentina Castagnola graduated in Photochemistry and Molecular Materials at the University of Bologna in 2011. She obtained her PhD from the University of Toulouse in December 2014 working at the Laboratory for Analysis and Architecture of Systems (LAAS) of the French National Research Centre (CNRS). Her thesis focused on the development of highly biocompatible and nanostructured neuroprosthetics intended for chronic implantation (brain-machine interfaces). Her work was awarded the “Best Thesis” prize 2014 from the Doctoral School. Dr Castagnola worked at the Centre for BioNano Interactions (University College Dublin) as a postdoctoral fellow from 2015 to 2019 looking at biological interactions of carbon-based and plasmonic nanomaterials driven by the biomolecular corona. At CBNI, she was involved as representative postdoc in several FP7 and H2020 EU Projects related to nanosafety, regulation and nanomedicine (Graphene Flagship, FutureNanoNeeds, Nanostreem, Nanoclassifier, QualityNano) and she was awarded two personal grants (IRC postdoctoral fellowship and SFI Industry Fellowship). In November 2019, she joined the Center for Synaptic Neuroscience and Technology at the IRCCS Ospedale San Martino, working as Senior Postdoctoral Fellow for the EU FET Graphene Flagship Core III. In 2020, she became IRCCS Researcher and she is currently developing her multidisciplinary research line involving nanomaterial-based wireless neural modulation, nanomaterials interactions with biological barriers, wireless induced modulation of the blood brain barrier (BBB) permeability and cellular communication in BBB.