Valentino was born and grew up in Belgium (Genk, Limburg) and received his Master’s degree in biomedical sciences with a specialization in bioelectronics and nanotechnology at Hasselt University, Belgium. He started his PhD in October 2023 on the development of self-healing nanocomposite materials for bone tissue engineering.

Current self-healing materials often exhibit poor mechanical properties making them unsuitable for biomedical applications in tough tissues. In his PhD project, he will investigate an innovative strategy to combine nanoparticles and reversible crosslinking to engineer robust self-healing nanocomposites and explore their osteoinductive properties.