Dario Carugo

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 UCL School of Pharmacy (University College London).

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), 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 UCL as a Lecturer in Pharmaceutical Nanotechnology and Nanofabrication, where he was then appointed 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. His research and translational work have been funded by Wessex Medical Research, the National Biofilms Innovation Centre (NBIC), COST Action, NIHR, MRC, and EPSRC.

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.

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)