Affiliation: Utrecht University
Keywords: Biofabrication, 3D printing, bioprinting, regenerative medicine, tissue engineering, biomaterials, hydrogels, stem cells, synthetic biology, photonics, additive manufacturing, volumetric printing, organ-on-chips
Full profile: Riccardo Levato is Associate Professor of Translational Bioengineering and Biomaterials at the Department of Clinical Sciences (Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Utrecht University), and at the Department of Orthopaedics of the University Medical Center Utrecht, in the Netherlands.
He is also Principal Investigator at the Regenerative Medicine Center Utrecht, were he coordinates a multidisciplinary team of engineers, materials scientists, chemist, physicists, and biologists (https://www.levatolab.eu/team), focusing on the development of novel 3D bioprinting technologies, biomaterials and cell engineering techniques to build in the lab tissues for regenerative medicine, and as advanced in vitro models for drug discovery, disease modelling, biomedical research, and as replacement of animal experimentation.
He pioneered the development of several light-responsive hydrogels and volumetric bioprinting techniques able to print cell-laden constructs of multi-centimeter size in few seconds. Since 2020 he was awarded a Starting grant from the European Research Council on the development of a novel volumetric bioprinting technology for organoid research and to engineer functional bone marrow analogues in vitro, and in 2023 he received a VIDI grant from the Dutch Research Council, for the development of smart bioprinting techniques and dynamic, stimuli-responsive materials that mimic native tissue development. Since 2021, he is coordinator of a European consortium (ENLIGHT, Future and Emerging Technologies scheme, European Innovation Council pilot), aiming at developing biofabricated pancreas to study treatments for diabetes.
Prior to moving to Utrecht, he worked in several research groups across Europe: 3Bs, University of Minho (Portugal); BioMatLab, Technical University of Milan (Italy), Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC, Spain), and he holds a cum laude PhD in Biomedical Engineering from IBEC and from the Technical University of Catalonia. For his reasearch, he was conferred several awards including the 2016 Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine Young Investigator Award, the 2021 Jean Leray award from the European Society for Biomaterials, the 2022 Robert Brown award from the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society, and the 2023 Mid-career Investigator Award from the International Society for Biofabrication (ISBF). Riccardo is also serving on the Board of Directors of ISBF, and as Editorial Board Member of the journals Biofabrication and Materials Today Bio.