Paola Occhetta, PhD profile page

Dr. Paola Occhetta is the CEO and co-founder of BiomimX and an assistant professor in bioengineering at the Polytechnic University of Milan. Her main interests are the development, validation and commercialization of patho-physiological organ-on-a-chip models as tools for drug screening. She received a PhD in 2015 on the development of microfluidic platforms for 3D cell culture. She concluded a 4-year postdoc fellowship at the Department of Biomedicine of the University Hospital of Basel, working on the establishment of in vitro models of cartilage development and pathologies. She came back to the Polytechnic University of Milan as a postdoctoral fellow, as a beneficiary of the European Project MSCA Individual Fellowship and of a project for young researchers financed by Cariplo Foundation, both aimed at developing a model of joint-on-a-chip for advancing the development of anti-osteoarthritic drugs. She has been recently appointed assistant professor with a tenure position at the Polytechnic University of Milan as a beneficiary of a Horizon Europe ERC Starting Grant, one of the most prestigious project funds granted by the European Commission to talented young PIs, in the field of organs-on-a-chip and artificial intelligence. She is also an active member of the CEN CENLEC Focus Group, which drafted the roadmap for organ-on-a-chip standardization. She authored more than 35 scientific papers published on international peer-reviewed journals (h-index 17), 5 book chapters and she is the inventor of 1 granted patent.