Diego Ulisse Pizzagalli
(Principal Investigator)Diego is a researcher in Computational Medicine. After a PhD supported by SystemsX - the Swiss Initiative in Systems Biology - in which he studied the behavior of immune cells in vivo, he translated trajectory analysis methods to other domains including wearables and disease dynamics. He is leading the lab since 2022 and he is co-directing the IMMUNEMAP project. He has a mixed training in Computer Engineering and Medicine. His engineering side has a passion for microcontrollers, old algorithms, and network theory. His medical side has a passion for heart electrophysiology and immune-mediated disorders. He teaches subjects related to biomedical data analysis, is editor at Frontiers in Immunology and committe member at the International Center for Advanced Computing in Medicine - Pavia.
Raffaella Fiamma Cabini
(Postdoc 2023-2025)Raffaella obtained a PhD in Computational Mathematics and Decision Sciences at University of Pavia, which included a visiting period at USI. Her studies concern the design and implementation of algorithms and computational techniques for biomedical image processing and clinical data interpretation. Furthermore, she actively contributes to the dissemination and application of these techniques by participating in the organization of challenges that encourage the exploration of Open Science principles and aim to facilitate collaboration among researchers. Raffaella is also a committe member at the International Center for Advanced Computing in Medicine - Pavia.
Charlotte Petoletti
(Research Assistant - 2025)Charlotte studied Biomedical Engineering at University of Pavia and is currently studying immune cell extravasation in neuroinflammation, using a blood-brain-barrier on-chip model and computer vision methods for analyzing cytoskeleton remodelling.
Giulia Camoni
(Research Assistant - 2025)Giulia has a background in Medical Biotechnology from University of Camerino, and a passion for microbiology, virology and immunology. She is responsible for live cell imaging of electro-immune interactions. In collab. with the group of Prof. Engelhardt, Giulia is studying the extravasation of inflammatory immune cells in the CNS.
Mariaclaudia Nicolai
(Research Assistant 2023-2025)Mariaclaudia has a pharmaceutical background with a strong interest in applying computational research methods. Her research focuses on using artificial intelligence (AI) by leveraging scientific discoveries in the laboratory and transforming them into new treatment approaches to improve healthcare. As a research assistant at the Università della Svizzera italiana, Mariaclaudia applies language models used in Natural Language Processing (NLP) that determine which word is more likely to appear next in the sentence to find machine learning-based solutions for microscopy data analysis for the IMMUNEMAP project.
Farah Naz
(Visiting PhD Student 2024 - 2025)Farah is a PhD Student in Computational Mathematics and DecisionSciences at UniPV. She is spending her mobility period at USI where shw will contribute to the development of unsupervised learning methods for time-series analysis and explainable AI.
Lala Chaimae Naciri
(Visiting PhD Student) (2023-2024)Lala is a visiting PhD in Physiology from U. Cagliari. During her stay she will develop and apply machine learning methods for the analysis of fungiform papillae.
Enrico Moscatello
(Software Engineer) (2022 - 2024)Enrico is a student of Engineering of Computing Systems at Politecnico di Milano. He is the main programmer and IT infrastructure manager for IMMUNEMAP, responsible for developing and maintaining the platform's robust functionalities. This involves creating intuitive user interfaces, implementing data storage and retrieval mechanisms, and ensuring the smooth functioning of the entire infrastructure.
Lino Candian
(Student Intern) (2024)Lino is a student of Informatics at USI. During his research internship he is developing a novel sensor to transdermally image fluid accumulation in the abdomen. His work is supported by the UROP fellowship.