Team
ICS MAUGERI
Carlo Morasso
Project Coordinator
Carlo Morasso is a senior scientist at the Laboratory of Nanomedicine and Molecular Imaging at ICS Maugeri’s Pavia Institute. Dr. Morasso earned his PhD from the University of Milan and worked as a postdoctoral scientist at various institutions, focusing on the use of optical spectroscopies as diagnostic tools. He has an H-index of 24 and 63 peer-reviewed publications in high-impact journals such as JACS, Analytical Chemistry, Cancer Research, ACS Nano, and Cancer Communication.
Fabio Corsi
Responsible of the clinical protocol
Prof. Fabio Corsi is the director of the Surgery Department at ICS Maugeri and Associate Professor in General Surgery at University of Milan. Fabio Corsi has a long-lasting experience as a consultant oncology surgeon, particularly on breast cancer. Furthermore, Fabio Corsi contributed to many recent advances in the preclinical application of nano targeted drug delivery systems in different models of breast cancer. Fabio Corsi is Author of 168 peer-reviewed publications (H-index 38).
Francesca Piccotti
Unit member
Francesca Piccotti is a biotechnologist with 10 years of experience in the field of biobanking. Since the beginning of her early research career, she spent several years in management of biological samples and clinical data at the “Bruno Boerci” Biobank of Istituti Clinici Scientifici Maugeri (ICSM). Since 2022 she is working as researcher – with permanent position – at ICSM research hospital (IRCCS) of Pavia. In this context she has the opportunity to be involved in several research protocol focused on breast cancer and also getting familiar with Raman spectroscopy and imaging for the analysis of biological samples, in particular tumour tissues.
Arianna Bonizzi
Unit member
Arianna Bonizzi holds degrees in Neurobiology and a Master’s in Oncological Genetics from the University of Pavia. As a research fellow at the University of Milan (2017-2019), she contributed to the development of protein-based nanocages for the treatment of BC. During her PhD in Nutritional Sciences, completed in 2023, she specialized in vibrational spectroscopy, particularly Raman spectroscopy, for biomedical applications. Currently, as a postdoctoral researcher, Arianna focuses on the application of blood-based bioassays for the ultrasensitive detection of disease biomarkers at the single-molecule level.
Marta Truffi
Unit member
Dr. Marta Truffi is a biotechnologist devoted to the study of tumor biomarkers and advanced technologies to improve diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer. She got a PhD in Biomolecules, Structural Biology, Pathology and Biotherapy at the University of Paris VII – Denis-Diderot (France) in 2013. She is currently senior researcher at the research hospital Istituti Clinici Scientifici Maugeri IRCCS in Pavia (Italy) and co-director of the institutional Biobank “Bruno Boerci”. She published more than 60 peer-reviewed scientific publications and book chapters with more than 900 citations (h index of 21).
NIREOS SRL
Fabrizio Preda
Unit leader / WP1 leader
Fabrizio Preda is the CEO of NIREOS. He studied Physics Engineering in Politecnico di Milano University, where he worked as a research fellow for 5 years after receiving his Master’s degree in 2015. He is author of several peer-reviewed articles and co-inventor of three international patents. Since 2018, he is co-founder and Chief Executive Officer at NIREOS.
Antonio Perri
Unit member
Antonio Perri is the CTO at NIREOS and has worked since January 2020. He holds a Master’s degree and PhD in the area of photonics and nano-optics. He coordinates a team of researchers in the development of interferometers, spectral imagers and spectrometers in the visible light and infrared regions. His review of the NIREOS GEMINI interferometer was published in June 2021. He will take the role of Technical Manager.
Andrea Ragni
Unit member
Andrea Ragni is a research electronics engineer at NIREOS, since June 2020. He completed his PhD in 2019 in the VIBRA ERC PoC project and examined high-speed multichannel electronics for broadband coherent Raman imaging and undertook further postdoctoral study for another year until joining NIREOS.
Alex Barker
Unit member
Alex Barker is an optics research engineer and joined the company in 2021. He was awarded a PhD by the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology in New Zealand in 2014 where he researched organic materials and their use in photovoltaics. He then settled in Italy and held a series of postdoctoral research posts at the Italian Institute of Technology and worked on organometal halides as a new class of materials for photovoltaics. He was also a visiting scholar at Columbia University.
Lorenzo Vinco
Unit member
Lorenzo Vinco is a PhD student in Physics at Politecnico di Milano and optical engineer in NIREOS. He obtained his Master’s degree in Engineering Physics in 2022. His activity consists in exploring the hyperspectral imaging technology of NIREOS for a variety of applications, with a main focus on the biomedical field
RiverD International
Gerwin Puppels
Unit leader
Gerwin Puppels holds a Ph.D. in Applied Physics and has devoted his career to advancing Raman technology, methodology, and instrumentation for cell and tissue analysis. With extensive experience collaborating with medical professionals, he focuses on developing translational technologies to address clinical challenges. As the founder and Managing Director of RiverD International, Gerwin leads the development of innovative Raman-based products for tissue analysis and clinical diagnostics. He has authored over 200 peer-reviewed publications and holds 18 patents.
Rosa Soares
Senior Scientist, WP2 leader
Rosa is a senior scientist and Project Manager at RiverD with 5+ years of experience in developing and applying Raman spectroscopy for medical research purposes. Particularly, Rosa has been working on advancing Raman technology for cancer research, including for the intraoperative assessment of resection margins in oral cavity cancer. She is the leader of the Work Package 2 of the SpectraBreast project.
Tom Bakker Schut
Senior Scientist, team member
Senior research and application specialist at RiverD International B.V.. PhD in Biomedical Physics and more than 25 years of experience in developing clinical applications of Raman spectroscopy for cancer diagnosis at Erasmus Medical Center Rotterdam. Specialist in instrument control software, design of experiments, and development of multivariate statistical models and spectral data analysis software that can be applied to extract actionable clinical information in real time.
Elena Sokolova
Optical engineer/designer, team member
Elena is an optical engineer/designer at RiverD International. With a PhD and Doctor of Science in Optical Engineering and 43 years of experience in the development of optical spectrometers for variable applications, including Raman spectrometers. She is the author of the book “Optimization Techniques for Diffraction Spectrometers”.
CNR
Renzo Vanna
Unit leader / WP6 leader
He is researcher at IFN-CNR, based at Politecnico di Milano. With a PhD in Molecular Medicine and 7 years of experience in applying Raman spectroscopy in the clinical environment, his main goal is to apply new photonic technologies to biomedical problems. He is member of “Raman4Clinics” and of the International Society for Clinical Spectroscopy (CLIRSPEC).
Cristian Manzoni
Hyperspectral imaging
Dr. Cristian Manzoni is Research Director at IFN-CNR and a Physics professor at Politecnico di Milano. In 2009-2010, he was a visiting scientist at the Max Planck research group (CFEL, Hamburg). His work focuses on ultrabroadband parametric amplifiers, light pulse characterization, and femtochemical reactions using techniques like pump-probe and 2D spectroscopy. He also develops hyperspectral imaging for applications in environmental sensing, conservation science, security, and medical imaging.
Politecnico di Milano (POLIMI)
Dario Polli
Unit leader / WP4 leader (“Integration”)
Dario Polli is Full Professor of Physics at Politecnico di Milano (Italy). His main research focus is on coherent Raman spectroscopy and microscopy, ultrafast and non-linear optics, Fourier-transform spectroscopy and time-resolved pump-probe spectroscopy and microscopy. He published >140 scientific papers on international journals, cited approx. 8000 times. His H-index is 44. He became OPTICA Fellow in 2022 “For pioneering contributions to ultrafast spectroscopy and nonlinear label-free microscopy”. He is also co-founder of three startups.
Elena De Momi
Unit member
Elena De Momi obtained her MSc in Biomedical Engineering in 2002, and received her PhD in Bioengineering in 2006. She is currently an Assistant Professor at Politecnico di Milano. Since 2016, she has been an Associate Editor of IEEE ICRA, IROS, and BioRob, Area Chair of MICCAI, and she is currently the Publication Co-Chair of ICRA 2023. She is the PI for POLIMI of the EDEN2020 project and of the ATLAS project, and co-PI of the ARTERY project. She has been an evaluator and reviewer for the European Commission in FP6, FP7, and H2020.
Anna Bicchi
Unit member
Anna Bicchi obtained her MSc in Automation and Control Engineering in 2021. From 2021 to 2022, she was a research fellow and currently is a PhD candidate at Politecnico di Milano. Her research focuses on modeling and control of continuum robots for minimally invasive surgery.
Andrea Rabolini
Unit member
Andrea Rabolini is a PhD student in Physics at Politecnico di Milano. He completed his Master’s Degree in Engineering Physics. The main focus of his PhD is on coherent Raman microscopy and non linear optics, in particular on the building of a setup for wide-field broadband Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Scattering (CARS) microscopy. He is experienced in ultrafast optics, laser alignment, and nonlinear spectroscopy.
Giulio Cerullo
Unit member
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM)
Alfonso Rodríguez-Patón
Unit leader / WP3 leader
Alfonso Rodríguez-Patón is an artificial intelligence Full Professor at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) specializing in DNA computing, synthetic biology, and artificial intelligence applied to biomedicine. He has led several European projects (PLASWIRES, EVOPROG, BACTOCOM and BIOCELLPHE) and holds a Spanish patent on nucleic acid devices for logical inference. His research focuses on designing genetic circuits and programming biological systems. He has international postdoctoral experience at TUCS (Finland) and Harvard University (USA) and directs the Artificial Intelligence Lab (LIA) at UPM.
Lucía León Prieto
Unit member
Lucía León Prieto is an engineer with a strong interest in mathematical and computational approaches. Since her master’s thesis, she has been drawn to biomedical applications, and is now pursuing a PhD in Artificial Intelligence. Her research ranges from microfluidic lab-on-a-chip modeling through Computational Fluid Dynamics to the study of bacterial infections, both from transmission and pathogenesis perspectives. As part of this work, she has contributed to the European project BioCellPhe and collaborates with researchers at Imperial College London and the Institute of Cancer Research.
Enrique Manuel Pérez Roa
Unit member
Enrique Pérez Roa is a computer engineer with 14 years of private sector
experience as a full-stack developer. He holds a Computer Science degree
and a Master’s in Data Science, with extensive hands-on experience in
both development and data science roles, covering all phases of product
development. Currently pursuing a PhD in Artificial Intelligence, he
specializes in applying machine learning to medical and biological
problems, in the intersection of artificial intelligence and healthcare.
