Martina Pannuzzo

Profile

Martina obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Molecular Biology, Master’s degree in Biomolecular Chemistry, and Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the University of Catania (Italy). During her Ph.D. studies, she was awarded several fellowships to visit Prof. Karttunen's group at UWO in Canada and Prof. Marrink's group at RUG University in The Netherlands. She received a prize for the best Ph.D. thesis in Computational Biophysics (2010-2012) from the Italian Biophysical Society. After completing her Ph.D. studies, she spent three years at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany as a postdoctoral fellow (Prof. Böchmann's group) and Principal Investigator in the graduate school “Biomembranes”. Then, she moved to Pittsburgh to work for two years as a postdoctoral research associate in the Physics department (Prof. Deserno’s group) at Carnegie-Mellon University (USA). Before joining PharmCADD as a senior scientist, she spent more than three and a half years as a senior Marie Curie researcher at the Italian Institute of Technology (Prof. Decuzzi’s group). Her past and current research focus mainly on investigating biophysical processes by atomistic and coarse-grained Molecular Dynamics Simulation. Some of her studies look into the interaction of amyloidogenic peptides with the lipid membrane, membrane fusion and fission mechanisms, the computational modeling of smart polymeric materials, and the optimization of drug delivery systems. In her free time, she loves travelling, reading classics, science fiction and fantasy, and pet her two cats.