Dario Carugo

BIOGRAPHY

Dario is an Associate Professor of Biostimulation and Immunological Engineering in the Botnar Research Centre (NDORMS), and an Honorary Associate Professor of Pharmaceutics at the School of Pharmacy (University College London, UCL).

He is coordinator of the Micro-Devices, Regenerative and Interventional Pharmaceutics (μDRIP) research team, 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), where he specialised in Biological Fluid Dynamics & Bio-Machines. In 2012, he obtained a PhD in Bioengineering Sciences at the University of Southampton, where he developed microfluidic-based 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 technology platforms for acoustic manipulation of bacterial cells and ultrasound-enhanced intracellular drug delivery. He also developed microscale devices to reveal the effects of therapeutic physical stimuli on biological barriers, encompassing cell membranes and tissues. 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 was subsequently appointed to Lecturer in 2018 in the Department of Mechanical Engineering (Bioengineering Group). In 2020, he joined the School of Pharmacy at University College London (UCL) as a Lecturer in Pharmaceutical Nanotechnology and Nanofabrication. He was subsequently appointed to Associate Professor at UCL (Department of Pharmaceutics) in 2022. 

Dario is an editorial board member for the journals Biomedical Microdevices and Scientific Reports.

He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and has taught across a range of fundamental and applied subjects. These 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.

ADDRESSING BIOFILMS AND ENCRUSTATION IN MEDICAL DEVICES

Ali Mosayyebi, Andrew Hamilton, Sandra Wilks and Orestis Katsamenis (University of Southampton)

Costantino Manes (Politecnico di Torino)

Sarah Waters (University of Oxford)

Bhaskar Somani (University Hospital Southampton)

Francesco Clavica (University of Bern)

SCALABLE MANUFACTURING OF DRUG DELIVERY SYSTEMS AND CELL-LADEN CONSTRUCTS

Claudio Nastruzzi (University of Ferrara)

Gianluca Cidonio (Italian Institute of Technology)

STIMULI-MEDIATED DISRUPTION AND MODULATION OF BIOLOGICAL BARRIERS

Nick Evans and Fabrice Pierron (University of Southampton)

Eleanor Stride (University of Oxford)

Majella Lane, Mine Orlu, Abdul Basit, Christopher Morris, Maryam Parhizkar, Alethea Tabor and Ahad Rahim (University College London)

Bruno Sil dos Santos (London Metropolitan University)

Jeremy Webb (National Biofilms Innovation Centre)