Teresa Baldissera studied Biomedical Engineering at Politecnico di Milano, achieving her Bachelor’s Degree in 2020, with a thesis on the physicomechanical characterization of cross-linked gelatin hydrogels for drug delivery and tissue engineering. She continued her studies at Politecnico di Milano for the Master of Science, specializing in Bioengineering for Cells, Tissues and Biotechnology. For her Master’s thesis, she joined the Mechanobiology Lab of Prof. Raimondi and worked, under the guidance of Prof. Jacchetti, on the development and characterization of 3D microstructured porous devices as new tools in the therapeutic field. In particular, she investigated in silico the effect of mesenchymal stem cell traction forces on the NICHOID artificial niche and improved the device by developing a new injectable cellularized microniche to be implanted. She also focused on the validation of an in vitro model to predict the immune reaction to the implantation of 3D porous NICHOID scaffolds with different pore sizes.
Her thesis received the Master Thesis Award 2023 ‘Franco Maria Montevecchi - Politecnico di Torino’ issued by the GNB (National Group of Bioengineering).  It has also been selected as a finalist to be presented to the ESB-ITA2023 for the Master Thesis Award. She recently joined Prof. Schenke-Layland’s Lab at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen as a PhD candidate within the MSCA Doctoral Network flIMAGIN3D. . Her PhD project focuses on cardiovascular models in 2D and 3D, with the aim of investigating how altered microenvironmental conditions influence the physiological behaviour of vascular contructs. In particular she exploits FLIM and FLIM-based tecninques to study the effect of lack of oxygen and an increase in stiffness on vascular cells and tissue models.