BIO

Ilaria earned her M.Sc. in 2017 in Engineering Physics – Nanophysics and Nanotechnologies from the Politecnico di Milano (Italy). The experimental theses was carried out at the Italian Institute of Technology – Centre for Nanoscience and Technology (IIT-CNST) in Milano (Italy), where she was supervised by Dr. Maria Rosa Antognazza. Ilaria worked on characterizing light sensitive semiconducting polythiophenes for biological applications.

She obtained her Ph.D. in 2020 at the Politecnico di Milano (Italy) supervised by Dr. Maria Rosa Antognazza. Her thesis was focused on developing interfaces based on polythiophene materials for light controlled bioelectronics applications. During her Ph.D., she received the Graduate Student Award from the Materials Research Society, for showing a high level of excellence and distinction in academic achievements and materials research.

During the Ph.D. she spent a period at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, USA) through a Progetto Rocca Fellowship, supervised by Prof. Peter So, where she worked on developing label free techniques for bioelectronics applications.

After her PhD, Ilaria started a postdoctoral position at the Linköping University (Sweden) supervised by Assoc. Prof. Eleni Stavrinidou., where she combined her passion for bioelectronics to plants applications, focusing her research on polythiophene conductors for drug delivery and actuation.

Since March 2023, Ilaria has been working as a postdoctoral researcher at the POLYMAT with the innovative polymers group, to develop new conducting polymers for bioelectronics and energy applications.

Project

Freshwater scarcity is one of the global challenges of our century. Promising techniques for harvesting water from the atmosphere are emerging, coupling a water harvesting unit to a storing one. Stimuli responsive water harvesting materials offer the opportunity to harvest and store water on demand. However, they have been investigated only to a little extent, using temperature as a stimulus, which is aleatory and not deterministic. This action proposes the design and development of new polymeric materials for addressable water harvesting/storing units. A conducting backbone will be functionalized with hygroscopic zwitterionic side chains, for voltage addressability, volumetric actuation, and water harvesting, respectively. Finally, a proof-of-concept device based on the developed polymers will be interfaced with living plants, to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed approach.