Maria Gabriella was born and raised in Rome. She took her M.Sc degree in Biomedical Engineering “Cell, Tissues and Biotechnologies” at Politecnico di Milano in Milan in 2017. For her master thesis, she moved to Barcelona for a 6-months internship where for working on “Thermo-responsive fibers for cell sheet engineering” at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia.

She joined Merln in February 2018. Her project titles “Biomaterial testing on a microfluidic chip in 3D” and it focuses on the development of new testing solutions for biomaterial-based regenerative therapies with a particular focus on materials for bone regeneration. Current biomaterial testing approaches highly rely on the use of animal models, and traditional in vitro assays do not fully recapitulate the complexity of human tissues. Therefore, the aim is to develop an in vitro testing platform that will bridge this gap. For this purpose, she combines microfluidic and microfabrication techniques with 3D cell culture strategies.