Prof. Davide Brambilla
Davide graduated in Biotechnology at the University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy, in 2008. After completion of a Master in Medical Biotechnology, he performed his PhD at the School of Pharmacy at the University of Paris under the supervision of Prof. Patrick Couvreur focused on the design of polymeric nanoparticles for diverse biomedical applications. In 2012, he moved to the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich in the group of JC Leroux, where, after 3 years of post-doctoral stay, he was promoted group leader in 2015. In 2017, he has been appointed Assistant Professor at the School of Pharmacy at the Université de Montréal, where he started his independent research laboratory at the interface of biotechnology and pharmaceutical sciences. He teaches the Drug Delivery, Development of Biotechnology Drugs and Pharmacokinetics. His research interest include the design of polymeric microneedles for the non-invasive transdermal delivery of on-purpose designed diagnostic and therapeutic agents as well as new nanoparticulate and bio-conjugates platforms for the targeted delivery of biotherapeutic agents. He is member of the Controlled Release Society, the Canadian Biomaterial Society, the Canadian Society of Pharmaceutical Sciences and current secretary of the Canada Chapter of the Controlled Release Society.
He holds the Research Chaire in Biotherapy from the Canadian Generic Pharmaceutical Association and Biosimilars Canada
Dr. Mahdi Roohnikan
Mahdi completed his BSc and MSc in Polymer engineering at Amirkabir university of technology (Tehran Polytechnic) in 2009 and 2012, respectively. During his Master’s he developed a liquid crystal based optically active molecule with macromolecular properties. He then got admitted to McGill University in Chemical engineering to pursue his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Linda Reven (Chemistry Department) and Prof. Alejandro Rey. His thesis concerned developing stable Hydrogen-bonding liquid crystal nanocomposites based on fluorescent and plasmonic nanoparticles, he has finished his degree this summer. His research interests range from materials science and nanotechnology to drug-delivery and diagnostics. He has recently joined Prof. Brambilla’s group at Université de Montréal as a postdoctoral researcher to work on new non-invasive diagnosis methods in collaboration with the laboratory of Profs. Banquy (UdeM), DeCrescenzo (Polytechnique) and the Montreal Heart Institute.
Philippe Delbreil
Philippe completed his BSc and MSc in pharmaceutical sciences from the university of Geneva (2016) and Basel (2018), respectively. He worked on his Master thesis at the University of Lausanne Ludwig Cancer Research center, where he characterized the CD8 T-cell response in the presence of mutants of an immunodominant antigenic peptide. During this work he used the yellow fever vaccine YF-17D as a model for immunity. After graduating from his Master's degree, he worked as a research assistant at the department of microbiology and molecular medecine of the university of Geneva, under the supervision of Professor Dominique Soldati-Favre, with a focus on parasitology and the Apicomplexan parasite Toxoplasma Gondii. He joined our team as a PhD student in the summer of 2019 to work on novel approaches for the treatment of neuro-degenerative diseases.
Sam Babity
Sam graduated with a degree in Biochemistry from Concordia University in 2016. During that time, he completed a summer internship with Dr. Sultan Darvesh at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia and worked on his Honours thesis project in Dr. Pat Forgione’s lab. In 2019 he completed a MSc degree in Pharmaceutical Science in the laboratory of Prof. Brambilla. His research interests include the development of bioinspired drugs and drug delivery systems. He is currently performing his PhD on the design of fluorescent probes for biological analytes and optimizing their delivery to the skin using microneedles.
Fatma Moawad
Fatma completed her BSc and MSc in pharmaceutical sciences at Beni-Suef University, Egypt. Her M.Sc project focused on the development of a new formulation for the treatment of spasticity, exploiting nanotechnology to improve the pharmacological properties of the active ingredient. In 2019, she performed an internship at NRCC and another one at CHU Sainte-Justine, Montreal, Canada. Her research interests include nanomedicine, drug delivery systems, gene therapy and targeting. In the winter of 2020, she joined prof. Brambilla’s team at Université de Montréal as a phd student to work on nanoparticles for controlled and targeted drug delivery.
Elise Laszlo
Elise graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from the University of Lorraine, France, in 2018. In September she joined Prof. Davide Brambilla’s team to develop advanced non-invasive methods for medical diagnosis in collaboration with Prof. Xavier Banquy (UdeM), Prof. Gregory DeCrescenzo (Polytechnique) and the Montreal Heart Institute.
Carolina Penalosa
Carolina graduated from National University of Colombia with a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology in 2013. She worked with cell culture and applied immunology. She is currently enrolled in the MSc in Pharmaceutical Science at Montreal University, where she is working on the design and engineering of nanoparticles for for the targeting of intravascular molecular targets involved in several serious diseses.
Giorgio Sala
Giorgio completed his Bachelor degree in Biology sciences in 2017 at the University of Milano - Bicocca and he is currently enrolled in the second year of the Master degree in Medical Biotechnology in the same university. He joined out team for his master’s research internship working on lipid nanoparticles for targeted drug delivery of biological drugs.
Silvia Garau
Silvia is a Master’s degree student in Pharmaceutical Sciences and Technologies at the Università Statale degli Studi di Milano, corrently enrolled in her last year. She joined Prof. Davide Brambilla’s team on September 2019 to work on microneedles functionalization for interstitial fluid collection. The project is part of her master’s research internship, developed in partnership with Dr. Gori Alessandro at the National Research Council in Italy and Prof. Xavier Banquy.
Former members
Maya Mailloux
Maya is an undergratuate student currently studying in biopharmaceutical science at the Université of Montréal. She worked as a summer intern in our laboratory.
Zineb Benkhachan
Zineb is currently enrolled in the second year of the Master in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Geneva. She completed her research internship in our laboratory.
