News

Congratulations to Prof. Milena Bellin, who has been awarded the title of "Cavaliere dell'Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana", the highest State honor! This prestigious recognition celebrates her extraordinary scientific merits and pioneering contributions to biomedical research in cardiac arrhythmias, stem cell models, and precision medicine.

Congratulations to Natasa and Carola, who placed 4th and 5th at the DiBio Photo Contest! Natasa competed with "United we stand", a stunning immunofluorescent image of hiPSC-derived cardiomyocytes. Carola presented "Drop by drop", an excellent shot capturing the replenishing of a Multi Electrode Array (MEA) chip used to measure the electrical activity of cardiomyocytes.

Congratulations to Emma for winning the Best Poster Prize at the 1st ANA Department Symposium at Leiden University Medical Center, bringing together researchers from the Department of Anatomy and Embryology to share their work, exchange ideas, and build new connections

Congratulations to Giulia, who won the best presentation award in the Moderated Poster session "From drugs to genes: toxicity and therapy" at the Frontiers in CardioVascular Biomedicine 2026 conference in Leuven (Belgium)! She presented her work on modelling patient-specific doxorubicin cardiotoxicity in multicellular hiPSC-derived 3D cardiac microtissues.

Prof. Bellin will be an invited speaker at the upcoming iPSZürich Symposium at the University of Zürich, presenting in the session on "Translational and Clinical Applications". 

Congratulations to Federica D'Ettorre, who successfully defended her PhD thesis!

Congratulations to Francesca Libralon, who defended her Master's thesis and graduated cum laude!

Congratulations to Emma Zanella, PhD student in our laboratory, who won the Best Poster Prize at the 23rd Dutch-German Joint Meeting in Amsterdam! Emma presented her work "Multicellular human cardiac microtissues to uncover disease mechanisms and therapeutic rescue in arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy" (IMPACT project).

Congratulations to Beatrice Gabbin, who has been awarded the 2025-2026 Distinguished Women Scientists Fund travel grant by the Dutch Network of Women Professors! She will use this grant to support her upcoming postdoctoral research at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia.

Congratulations to Davide Visentin, who defended his Master's thesis and graduated cum laude!

Congratulations to Carola Carlini, PhD student in our laboratory, who won the prize for Best Poster at the ABCD-SIBBM National Ph.D. Meeting 2026 (Ferrara, Italy)! Carola presented her poster "Generation and characterization of allelic series of hiPSCs to classify variants of unknown significance in arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy" as part of the IMPACT project.

Congratulations to Viviana, our Senior Researcher in Leiden, who won the Prize for the best oral presentation by postdoctoral researchers during the Quarterly Regenerative Medicine Theme Awards in the categories "Visual design & delivery and Audience engagement & discussion"!

We bid farewell to our Research Technician from the Leiden Lab, Dorien Ward, and wish her all the best for this new chapter! Thank you for your years of dedication and hard work. 

Congratulations to Beatrice, who successfully defended her PhD thesis titled "From Biofabrication to Multi-Organ Platforms: Engineering the Human Heart-Kidney Axis In Vitro" last week!

Our laboratory successfully participated in the 7th Scientific Retreat of the Department of Biology, held on May 12-13, 2026 at the Orto Botanico! It was a fantastic opportunity to share our latest research, attend inspiring sessions, and connect with our departmental colleagues.