Our members at IdISBA
Manuel Gómez-Florit, PhD
Miguel Servet Fellow
Holds a degree in Biology (2008), a degree in Biochemistry (2008) and a Master’s degree in Microbiology (2009) from the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB). His doctoral thesis (2011-2015) was developed at the TERCIT Group in collaboration with Numat Biomedical (a company that develops bioactive materials for implants). As a postdoctoral researcher, he obtained a Nano2021 visiting research fellowship (Norwegian Research Council) and a postdoctoral fellowship to work at the Department of Biomaterials, University of Oslo, Norway, from October 2015 to September 2016. In 2016, he was awarded a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship (EU-H2020) at 3B’s Research Group, University of Minho (UMinho), Portugal, to develop 3D bioprinting strategies for tendon tissue engineering in the team of Prof. Manuela E. Gomes. Afterwards, he first received a Junior Research Fellowship and then an Assistant Research Fellowship from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). Since February 2022, he is a Research Associate through a Miguel Servet contract (Instituto de Salud Carlos III) at IdISBa – Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria de las Islas Baleares, Spain. He is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at the UIB. He has participated in 20 national and international projects as PI or co-PI (5 projects) or team member.
Silvia Chiera, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Holds a bachelor’s degree in Science and Biomolecular Technologies (2012) and a master’s degree in Cellular and Molecular Biotechnologies (2015), both from the University of Trento, Italy. Her master’s thesis training was conducted over one year at the 3B’s Research Group, University of Minho (UMinho), Portugal, focused on tendon tissue engineering. Afterwards, she was awarded two pre-doctoral grants. The first one focused on investigating the role of extracellular vesicles (EVs) in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) at the Transcriptional Neurobiology Lab under Prof. Manuela Basso (University of Trento). The second grant, “Dynamic Cell Culture on Tendon Prostheses,” was conducted at BIOtech, Centre of Biomedical Technologies, under Professors Claudio Migliaresi and Antonella Motta. This research served as a starting point for her PhD in Materials, Mechatronics, and Systems Engineering, which she completed in 2021 with a dissertation on developing a model scaffold for anterior cruciate ligament tissue engineering.
During her PhD, she participated in the H2020 Remix MSCA research and mobility project funded by the EU, which enabled her to work at Chonbuk National University, South Korea, in Prof. Gilson Khang’s lab. Her research focused on the characterization and biological validation of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine (TERM) bioactive scaffolds using natural materials such as silk proteins.
In her first postdoctoral role, she explored regenerative strategies in dental implantology and methods for characterizing technologies to counteract infectious agents, working with Prof. Giandomenico Nollo at the University of Trento. In July 2024, she joined the TERCIT group under the supervision of Dr. Manuel Gómez-Florit, supported by the Folium Medicina 2023 grant, where her focus is on biomaterial strategies for regenerative medicine applications, primarily on tendon tissue-related.
Kristiyan Stiliyanov-Atanasov
Predoctoral Fellow
Is a graduate of Biochemistry (2021) and M.Sc. in Biomedical Research (2022), with special mention in translational biomedical research. He is now pursuing his PhD funded by a pre-doctoral contract P-FIS from the Institute of Health Research Carlos III (ISCIII) (2024) on hyaluronic acid hydrogels for tendon regeneration. His research focuses on the characterization of platelet-derived extracellular vesicles (EVs) and natural ECM-based hydrogels for the release of EVs in tendon regeneration.
