Valentina Cauda is Full Professor of Nanotechnology at the Politecnico di Torino (Italy), where she teaches courses in Nanotechnology and Nanomedicine. She leads the TrojaNanoHorse Laboratory (TNHLab) and is co-founder and scientific advisor of two deep-tech start-ups, U-Care Medical Srl and Hematica Srl.
She received her M.Sc. degree in Chemical Engineering in 2004 and her Ph.D. in Materials Science in 2008. She subsequently worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain) and at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (Germany), focusing on nanoparticle-based drug delivery systems. From 2010 to 2015, she was Senior Postdoctoral Researcher at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) in Turin. In 2016, after being awarded a prestigious ERC Starting Grant (TrojaNanoHorse), she returned to the Politecnico di Torino as faculty.
Prof. Cauda is the Principal Investigator of numerous industrial, national, and European research projects. Among the most significant are the FET Open RIA MIMIC-KeY, the EIC Pathfinder RESYNC, two ERC Proof of Concept projects (XtraUS and AI-CUrES), and two PRIN projects funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR). She has also served as hosting supervisor for a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (MINT) and has led several proof-of-concept projects supported by private foundations and innovation funding schemes.
Her scientific achievements have been recognized through several prestigious awards, including the Young Researcher Prize from the Department of Chemistry at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (2010), the GiovedìScienza Award (2013), the Zonta Prize for Chemistry (2015), the USERN Prize for Biological Sciences (2017), the VENUS International Award for Excellence in Women in Science (2023), and many innovation prizes for her start-ups.
Prof. Cauda has authored more than 175 peer-reviewed scientific publications (H-index: 52) and is the inventor of 11 international patents covering biomedical devices and the biomedical applications of metal oxide nanoparticles.
Her research focuses on the development of theranostic nanomaterials for precision medicine. Her work spans the wet synthesis, surface engineering, and physicochemical characterization of metal oxide nanoparticles coated with biomimetic lipid bilayers derived from both artificial systems (liposomes and lipid nanoparticles, LNPs) and natural sources (extracellular vesicles). These multifunctional nanoplatforms are designed for targeted drug delivery, stimuli-responsive therapies (including ultrasound- and light-triggered treatments), molecular imaging (fluorescence and ultrasound), and precision cancer therapy.