Dario Carugo

Dario is an Associate Professor of Biostimulation and Immunological Engineering in the Botnar Research Centre (NDORMS), and is an investigator in the EPSRC Centre for Antimicrobial Research and Engineering (CARE) and the NIHR "CASSETTE" trial. 

He holds BSc and MSc degrees in Biomedical Engineering from Politecnico di Milano (Italy), specialising in Biological Fluid Dynamics & Bio-Machines. During his MSc research, he developed a physical simulator of mass transfer in patients undergoing hemodialysis. In 2012, he obtained a PhD in Bioengineering Sciences at the University of Southampton, developing biomimetic microfluidic models for the evaluation of intravascular therapeutics (including embolic microparticles and sclerosing foams). He subsequently worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Southampton (2012-2014, funded by an FP7 European project and an EPSRC Doctoral Prize award) and University of Oxford (2014-2016, Institute of Biomedical Engineering). In this period, he engineered microscale acoustic devices for cell manipulation and intracellular drug delivery. He also designed novel mechanistic systems to reveal the effects of therapeutic physical stimuli on biological barriers and optimise the stimulation conditions to improve treatment outcomes. In Oxford, he was awarded a Junior Research Fellowship in Engineering at Jesus College. For his work in these areas, he has received awards by the Italian National Bioengineering Group, Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), EPSRC, and BBSRC.

In 2016, he was awarded a tenure-track New Frontiers Fellowship by the University of Southampton, where he subsequently became Lecturer in the Bioengineering Research Group (Department of Mechanical Engineering). In 2020, he joined the School of Pharmacy at University College London (UCL) as a Lecturer in Pharmaceutical Nanotechnology and Nanofabrication, where he then became Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutics. 

Dario's research focuses on the design of mechanistic models, quantitative methods, and prototype devices for the development of novel therapeutic modalities. These mainly include interventional and stimuli-mediated treatments that can disrupt or modulate biological systems to induce anti-microbial, anti-inflammatory, or reparative/restorative effects. Dario is an editorial board member for the journals Biomedical Microdevices and Scientific Reports.

He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and teaches across a range of fundamental and applied subjects. Taught subjects include Cardiovascular and Urinary Systems Physiology, Drug Delivery, Micro- and Nano-Technologies for Drug Development and Screening, Clinical Pharmaceutics, Interventional Medicine and Drug-Device Combinations, Fluid Mechanics, and Engineering Design.