People
Coordinator
Sabrina Brigadoi
Università degli Studi di Padova, Italy
Dr. Sabrina Brigadoi is Assistant Professor at the Department of Developmental and Social Psychology at the University of Padova. She received her master degree in Bioengineering in 2010 and then her PhD in Psychological Science in 2014 both from the University of Padova. During her PhD, she visited both the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging in Boston and University College London (UCL), working on signal processing techniques and neonatal atlases for functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) applications. She worked for one year as Research Associate at UCL, before coming back as post-doctoral fellow at the University of Padova, working on advances in fNIRS and performing cognitive studies in infants and adults. In 2018 she won a starting grant from the University of Padova, to study the relation between glycemic changes and brain oxygenation changes in very preterm neonates, which was further funded by the Italian Ministry of Health. Dr. Brigadoi’s research activity covers a broad range of topics, both methodological and neuroscientific, most of them related to the development and application of optical techniques to study human brain development, brain functions and its pathological alterations.
WP leaders
Davide Contini
Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Davide Contini (PhD, Ass. Prof.), Head of the fNIRS lab. He has been an Associate Professor of Physics at Politecnico di Milano since 2014. His research activity is focused on time-resolved spectroscopy of highly diffusive media for applications in biology and medicine. He designed, developed and characterized different systems for the non-invasive measurement of the functional activity in the cerebral and muscular tissues. He participated in several EU funded projects. He co-authored more than 250 publications on international peer-reviewed journals and congress proceedings with an h-index of 33. He is co-founder of PioNIRS srl, Spin-off Company of Politecnico di Milano.
Idan Tamir
QuLab, Israel
Dr. Tamir obtained his PhD in immunology from the Weizmann Institute (Rehovot Israel), followed by a fellowship at National Jewish Hospital (Denver CO) supported by grants from the NIH and awards from the American Leukemia Society. Since 2001, Dr. Tamir has been involved in multiple life science start-up companies, some as a founder and others as CTO and CEO. He was the President and CEO of RAD Biomed, one of Israel’s leading medical device accelerators, founding over 20 new startups with several notable exits (Steadymed acquisition by United Therapeutics, and Eon Surgical acquisition by Teleflex) and over $100M in follow-on investments. Dr. Idan Tamir is the co-founder and CEO of QuLab Medical, an Israeli start-up company developing the next generation of minimally-invasive, multi-analyte continuous metabolic monitoring patches. QuLab Medical has one granted patent for its innovative sensor technology and three additional pending patent applications and is the recipient of multiple grants from the Israeli Innovation Authority (IIA) and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF). Dr. Tamir is the co-author of 15 peer-reviewed publications and recipient of several granted patents.
Chiara Dalla Man
Università degli Studi di Padova, Italy
Chiara Dalla Man was born in Venice, Italy, on March 2, 1977. She graduated cum laude in Electronics Engineering at the University of Padova in 2000 and received the Ph.D degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Padova and City University London, in 2005. She is currently Associate Professor in Bioengineering at University of Padova. Her research activity, carried out in collaboration with Italian and foreign investigators, regards mainly mathematical modeling of physiological systems, in particular metabolic and endocrine systems. She is author of more than 170 publications (to date Scopus reports 177 papers in the period 2002-2023, quoted 10960 times, with an h-index of 52) on international journals and 4 International Patents. She is on the editorial board of Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology and serves as reviewer for several international journal.
Eugene Dempsey
University College Cork, Ireland
Professor Eugene Dempsey is a UCC graduate, he completed postgraduate training in Paediatrics in Ireland and later a Neonatal Fellowship at McGill University Health Centre, Montreal. He is the inaugural Horgan Chair in Neonatology at University College Cork, a consultant Neonatologist at Cork University Maternity Hospital and is clinical lead at the INFANT Research Centre. He is a member of a number of international collaborations conducting randomised trials on different aspects of neonatal care (Premod 2, Safeboosc3 and COSGOD trials). He leads a number of local clinical studies, supervising PhD students and junior doctors on many aspects of newborn medicine including cardiovascular support and the newborn microbiome. He is a member of a number of international organisations including the European Society of Paediatric Research, European Neonatal Echo Working group, European NIRS Working group and Pharmacology section of the European Society for Paediatric Research. He has been awarded a number of Higher Degrees, including a doctorate for work on Hypotension in the preterm infant, an MSc in Health Care Ethics and Law and an MA in Teaching and Learning, focused on Simulation based procedural care. He has > 200 publications in newborn care.
Jose Vehi
Universitet de Girona, Spain
Dr. Josep Vehí is full Professor at the University of Girona and research associate at the Girona Biomedical Research Institute. Since 2018 Prof. Vehi belongs to the Spanish centre of excellence CIBERDEM: “Networked Research Centre on Diabetes and associated Metabolic Diseases”. His research interests include control systems with application to bioengineering, applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning to biomedicine, modelling and simulation of biomedical and biological processes and human-in-the-loop control systems design. He is a co-author of more than 150 peer-reviewed international journal papers and 12 books and chapters of books. Throughout his career, Prof. Josep Vehí has supervised 18 doctoral theses and numerous master’s theses and bachelor’s theses. In 2000 Prof. Vehí founded the “Laboratory of Modelling, Identification, and Control Engineering” (MICELab), recognized and funded as “consolidated group” by the government of Catalonia. The MICELab Group consists of a team of well- trained people having a solid theoretical basis in: Mathematics, Computer Engineering, Control Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, and Biomedical Engineering, and with the capacity and experience of having led and participated in a large number of competitive research projects, both at European and national level, and by its ability to achieve transferable products.
Alberto Scarpa
DAVE Embedded Systems, Italy
Alberto Scarpa is project manager in DAVE Embedded Systems and CEO of D-EYE. After the telecommunication Engineering degree, Alberto joined M31 (accelerator and engineering company) as project manager for medical and automation projects. Later Alberto was a co-founder of D-EYE (a medtech startup) first as CTO and then as CEO. Alberto managed the development of the D-EYE solution from concept to certified product in the market with more than 3000 units sold worldwide. With this experience, Alberto and the company won many awards in the innovation and medical industry (like Premio Marzotto and Bioupper by Novartis) and was a partner of the European project SeeFar. Alberto also received a MBA (master in business administration) from CUOA (Italy) and University of Michigan – Dearborn (USA). Alberto is a post-degree mentor for University of Padova and a startup mentor for Newchip Accelerator (USA). Alberto joined DAVE Embedded Systems (embedded technologies) as project manager for medical projects. His interests and researches include digital innovation in the healthcare sector, startup and new business model development, product development, machine learning and IoT applied to medical data, privacy and data management, medical certifications for products and softwares (ISO 13485, FDA GMP, ISO 62304, SaMD).
Paola Rigo
Università degli Studi di Padova, Italy
Dr. Paola Rigo is an Assistant Professor at the University of Padua and a member of the Padua Neuroscience Center. She received her Ph.D. in Psychological Sciences and Education at the University of Trento (2013). She was a post-doctoral fellow at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institute of Health (US; 2014-2015) and Nanyang Technological University (Singapore; 2016-2017). She is an author of 27 peer-reviewed articles in international scientific journals (most of them in high-quality journals including Scientific Report Nature, Proceeding of National Academy of Sciences, Developmental Review, NeuroImage and Social neuroscience), one book and five book chapters. Her research interest focuses on the psychobiological basis of parenting and intersubjectivity. Through an ecological and interdisciplinary perspective, she investigates how caregivers’ response is modulated by the interplay between individual and clinical factors of parents (e.g., temperament, mood) and biological changes occurring during the early postpartum period. In connection with these studies, her research also investigates the effect of situational context in which parents respond to infant needs. She uses an integrated approach from psychological measures to observational, behavioral, and neuroimaging studies (e.g., fMRI, EEG and NIRS).
Sabrina Brigadoi
Università degli Studi di Padova, Italy
Dr. Sabrina Brigadoi is Assistant Professor at the Department of Developmental and Social Psychology at the University of Padova. She received her master degree in Bioengineering in 2010 and then her PhD in Psychological Science in 2014 both from the University of Padova. During her PhD, she visited both the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging in Boston and University College London (UCL), working on signal processing techniques and neonatal atlases for functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) applications. She worked for one year as Research Associate at UCL, before coming back as post-doctoral fellow at the University of Padova, working on advances in fNIRS and performing cognitive studies in infants and adults. In 2018 she won a starting grant from the University of Padova, to study the relation between glycemic changes and brain oxygenation changes in very preterm neonates, which was further funded by the Italian Ministry of Health. Dr. Brigadoi’s research activity covers a broad range of topics, both methodological and neuroscientific, most of them related to the development and application of optical techniques to study human brain development, brain functions and its pathological alterations.