Bio
Prof. Dr. Gianluca Ciardelli graduated in Chemistry in 1994 at the University of Pisa (Italy) and obtained a PhD in Natural Sciences in 1997 at the ETH in Zurich (Switzerland). He is now Full Professor in Biomedical Engineering and coordinates the "Materials in Bionanotechnology and Biomedical Lab” group at the Dep. of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering of Politecnico di Torino. He has over 20-years’ experience in research in the field of Biomaterials for Tissue Engineering, Controlled Drug Delivery, Nanomedicine. In the last 10 years, according to the Scopus database, he has authored 106 documents (total documents published =250, starting in 1995) (https://www.scopus.com/au-thid/detail.uri?authorId=7004826651). These documents were published constantly in this period reaching the maximum number of 16 in 2020. The total h-index is 49. The total number of citations is 9320.

Bio
Dr. Roberto Contieri is a urologist at the Istituto Nazionale Tumori di Napoli IRCCS Fondazione "G. Pascale", Naples, Italy. He specialized in Urology in 2024 at Humanitas University in Milan, where he developed a strong focus on urologic oncology. Dr. Contieri has conducted research and clinical fellowships at prestigious international institutions, including the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam and MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and actively collabo-rates with leading centers worldwide. He has authored more then 70 publications in international peer-reviewed journals. As a member of the EAU Young Academic Urologists (YAU) Urothelial Group and the International Bladder Cancer Group, he is actively involved in international research initiatives. Dr. Contieri has received multiple scholarships, including from the European Urological Scholarship Programme (EUSP) and the ERUS Robotic Curriculum Programme.

Talk
Hirofumi Hitomi is a professor at Kansai Medical University, having earned his MD and PhD from Kagawa University. His research areas include regenerative medicine, nephrology, and pharmacology. He serves as a councilor or delegate for several academic societies, including the Japanese Society for Regenerative Medicine, the Japanese Pharmacological Society, and the Japanese Society of Nephrology. Throughout his career, he has published 104 peer-reviewed papers. His research primarily focuses on regenerative medicine utilizing induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, specifically targeting the kidneys and endocrine organs. Additionally, he is employing iPS cells derived from patients to explore the pathogenesis of diseases and to develop new treatment options.

Bio
Chiara Tonda-Turo received her Master’s degree (2006) in Biomedical Engineering and PhD (2011) in Biomedical Engineering at Politecnico di Torino, where she worked on the development of bioartificial constructs for repairing peripheral nerve. From 2021, she is an Associate Professor at the DIMEAS at Politecnico di Torino. Chiara's scientific background is related to the design, processing and characterisation of biomedical materials (natural and synthetic polymers and their blend), aiming to nano- and micro- scale design and manufacturing of biomimetic and innovative medical devices for tissue engineering, advanced therapies in regenerative medicine, controlled drugs/biomolecules release and development of in vitro-like tissue models.

Bio
Federico Sinnona received his Master’s degree (2023) in Biomedical Engineering from Politecnico di Torino, where he worked on the development of a 3D in vitro model of the spinal cord. From April to October 2024, he was a research fellow at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, working on smart substrates for protein biomarker detection. In November 2024, he began his PhD in Bioengineering and Medical-Surgical Sciences at Politecnico di Torino, in a joint agreement with Kansai Medical University. His current research focuses on developing a kidney in vitro model by integrating smart biomaterials and innovative biofabrication techniques.