The frontier of science

2019
Orizzonti Vicini

Manuela Raimondi

In the future, thanks to regenerative medicine, will we cure ourselves with our own stem cells? This is explained by Manuela Raimondi, professor of bioengineering at the Politecnico di Milano, one of the 100 top Italian female scientists and Principal Investigator of three projects funded by the prestigious ERC. Manuela Raimondi tells us how a paradigmatic change in creative thinking can advance knowledge and reveals a secret: risking and putting our ideas into play is the best way to overcome the frontiers of knowledge. As she herself did, the protagonist of a professional metamorphosis that turned her from a biomechanical prostheses designer into a successful scientist: her in fact is the discovery of a mechanism that maintains function in stem cells, a discovery that opens a path to new theraphies. This video is part of three projects that have received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreements No. 646990, No. 754467 and No. 825159). Manuela is currently a full professor of Bioengineering at Politecnico di Milano. From 2003 to 2008 she has directed a Biomechanics lab inside the research hospital I.R.C.C.S. Galeazzi Orthopaedic Institute in Milano. Since 2009 she established the group of Mechanobiology at Politecnico di Milano. She has founded two labs at the campus Leonardo (the Mechanobiology lab and the Live Cell Imaging lab) where she based her team. They develop frontier tools for research in biology, such as nanoengineered stem cell niches, microfluidic bioreactors and miniaturised windows for imaging in vivo. Their long-term goal is to develop the potential of these tools in cell modelling, drug discovery and regenerative medicine. She teach the course Technologies for regenerative medicine at the MS program in Biomedical Engineering. She’s the PI of 3 projects funded by the European Research Council (ERC), one Consolidator of fundamental research in stem cell bioengineering and two Proof-of-Concept for the technology transfer of the tools developed within the Consolidator. She’s the founder of a start-up company that commercialises these tools.