2020-2024 Steering Committee Candidate:
Antonietta Gatti
Biosketch:
Dr. Gatti has an interdisciplinary background that ranges from physics, chemistry, biology, physiology and pathology. Dr. Antonietta Gatti has a 30-year experience in research in the field of biomaterials and biocompatibility at national and international level in various capacities. She is supportive, performance-driven, and passionate while focusing on continual learning and development. Dr Gatti invented the word Nanopathology and developed a new diagnostic tool that allows to make clinical diagnosis of pathologies due to nanoparticles like leukaemia, cryoglobulinemia and cancer. At present she is working in syndromes like Aerotoxicity and SIDS (neurological disease) by means of Scanning Electron Microscopes.
She wrote 260 articles in peer reviewed journals, 3 books and 7 chapters in books and she is reviewer for some international journals. She created the Laboratory of Biomaterials at the University of Modena.
Vision & Purpose:
The College of Fellows on Biomaterials and Engineering recognizes the status of excellence to the best among the best researchers in the world: a sort of “Oscar of Science”. Merit is recognized regardless of any other considerations, be they nationality, religion, political convictions… i.e. science in its own right. Biomaterials, particularly in nano-form, are gaining an extremely important role, but, in order to avoid the danger of taking a wrong path that could end up in a cul de sac, the interaction with the environment and with health of those materials of whom too little is known must be studied with a truly scientific approach. It is as important that the knowledge acquired be expanded at all levels: scientists expert of other fields, technicians, industrialists and general public who will find themselves facing a huge variety of products among which they are called to make choices that will inevitably have an impact to the environment. Another important aspect to consider is the role of nanosized accidental particulate matter and their role inside the body once internalized. That new aspect can identify the origin of some so-called “mysterious diseases” and create a practical collaboration with medical doctors. Accidentally-produced nanoparticles along with nanotechnological ones are more and more present in the environment, in food and in a growing number of every-day products. Hence the growing frequency of possible interactions with the body. So, biomaterialists can be very helpful to medical doctors to have them understand both the origin and the evolution of a huge number of pathologies (as our data confirm), and help them to find solutions, some of which may be found in nanotech itself. The College of Fellows can be a very important booster to what I believe is true progress.