Summary
Claudia Contini is currently a BBSRC Discovery Fellow and Lecturer in the Department of Life Sciences. Her research interests lie in the field of bottom-up synthetic biology with a focus on the design of synthetic life-like systems that mimic biological properties and functions for biotechnological and biomedical applications.
Claudia is an Executive and Steering Committee Member of fabriCELL and Director of the Association of Italian Scientists in the UK (AISUK).
PREVIOUS APPOINTMENTS
Before this appointment, Claudia was a Lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, L’Oréal and UNESCO UK Women in Science Engineering Fellow in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London and an ISSF Springboard Fellow in the Department of Chemistry at Imperial College London. Her project focused on the realisation of bio-inspired and life-like soft matter systems with applications to bottom-up synthetic biology and drug delivery.
Before this appointment, Claudia was a Research Associate in the Department of Chemistry. Her research area focused on investigating the interaction between nanomaterials and model biological systems. This project was funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.
In January 2017, she was awarded her PhD in Physical Chemistry at the University College of London (UCL). During her multidisciplinary PhD project, she gained experience working with polymeric nanoparticles from polymer synthesis to nanoparticles preparation, characterisation and functionalisation as efficient drug delivery systems and nanoreactors.
Prior to her post-graduate studies, Claudia was awarded an MScRES degree in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technologies at the University of Padua.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR EARLY CAREER RESEARCHERS:
If you are interested in Claudia Contini's research programme and would like to learn more about opportunities to join the research group, contact directly: c.contini@imperial.ac.uk .
Applications from excellent and enthusiastic students from all over the world are welcome! Feel free to get in touch to learn about possible vacancies.
Selected Publications
Journal Articles
Allen ME, Hindley J, O'Toole N, et al., 2023, Biomimetic Behaviours in Hydrogel Artificial Cells through Embedded Organelles, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol:120, ISSN:0027-8424
Pilkington C, Contini C, Barritt J, et al., 2023, A microfluidic platform for the controlled synthesis of architecturally complex liquid crystalline nanoparticles, Scientific Reports, Vol:13, ISSN:2045-2322, Pages:1-14
Acosta-Gutierrez S, Matias D, Avila-Olias M, et al., 2022, A multiscale study of phosphorylcholine driven cellular phenotypic targeting, Acs Central Science, Vol:8, ISSN:2374-7943
Contini C, Hu W, Elani Y, 2022, Manufacturing polymeric porous capsules, Chemical Communications, Vol:58, ISSN:1359-7345, Pages:4409-4419
Kokot H, Kokot B, Sebastijanović A, et al., 2020, Prediction of chronic inflammation for inhaled particles: the impact of material cycling and quarantining in the lung epithelium, Advanced Materials, Vol:32, ISSN:0935-9648
Contini C, Hindley J, Macdonald T, et al., 2020, Size dependency of gold nanoparticles interacting with model membranes, Communications Chemistry, Vol:3, ISSN:2399-3669, Pages:1-12
Contini C, Pearson R, Wang L, et al., 2018, Bottom-up evolution of vesicles from disks to high-genus polymersomes, Iscience, Vol:7, ISSN:2589-0042, Pages:132-144
Contini C, Schneemilch M, Gaisford S, et al., 2017, Nanoparticle–membrane interactions, Journal of Experimental Nanoscience, Vol:13, ISSN:1745-8080, Pages:62-81
Contini C, Joseph A, Cecchin D, et al., 2017, Chemotactic synthetic vesicles: Design and applications in blood-brain barrier crossing, Science Advances, Vol:3, ISSN:2375-2548