Our Story

Our First Team:

The Self-Assembly, Recognition, and Applications (SARA) Research Team was set-up in 2013 as the Theory section of the MOlecular NAnotechnology for LIfe Science Applications (MONALISA) group in the framework of ERC and AIRC projects led by Giacinto Scoles (Donner Professor of Science, Emeritus, at Princeton, US). At the time we were complementing the experimental activity of the MONALISA Biomedical Research Group, led by Daniela Cesselli, and the MONALISA AFM/nanobiophysics section, led by Matteo Castronovo. All sections were hosted at the then Department of Medical and Biological Sciences, now DAME, at University of Udine, Italy. In 2016 the AFM/nanobiophysics section moved to the University of Leeds UK), and in 2017 the Theory section moved to the University of Trieste (IT) where it matured into an independent multidisciplinary team aiming to provide solutions to problems of medical interest through the multiscale design of new molecular systems.

Former Members and Guests:

  • Nikola Minovski joined our team in March 2020 in the framework of our ARDF project. He successfully optimised and characterised in silico a set of nanobodies. At he end of the project he moved back to the National Institute of Chemistry (Slovenia).
  • Hendrik Vondracek joined our AIRC-MFAG project in 2019. He worked on the generation of protein-based biosensors using AFM, hosted in NanoLab@Elettra.
  • Barbara Medagli joined our group in 2017 in the framework of our AIRC-MFAG project. She expressed in silico designed nanobodies in bacteria. She carried out her activity hosted in de Zorzi lab. In 2020 she moved on and joined the Geremia group.
  • Luciana Gneo joined our group in 2017 in the framework of our AIRC-MFAG project. She worked on the generation of protein-based biosensors using AFM, hosted in NanoLab@Elettra. In 2019 she moved to the Institute of Immunology and Immunotherapy with the University of Birmingham (UK
  • Katja Praček, from the University of Primorska (Koper, Slovenia), joined our team in 2017 to work towards her bachelor thesis in Bioinformatics. She computationally characterized a set of antibody fragments capable of interfering with the association of P53 and Twist, proteins involved in cancer progression.
  • Cedrix Dongmo joined us in 2014 as an ICTP-TRIL predoctoral fellow. His key contribution to our team relies in the screening of computational designed peptides. He then successfully undertook his PhD in the Fogolari group (Udine, Italy) and in 2018 he joined the laboratory of Biomolecular Interactions and Transport at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Faculty of Biology, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan and the International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology in Warsaw (Poland).
  • Miguel Soler joined our team in 2014 working on peptides design. In 2016 he moved to SISSA (Trieste, Italy) where he became the main developer of BINDesignER. He is a key collaborator of our team and currently works at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT, Genoa, Italy).
  • Abimbola Adedeji worked with us in the framework of her PhD program in nanotechnology at the University of Trieste (Italy). As part of the atomic force microscopy (AFM) group, she was working on the generation of protein-based biosensors using AFM, she showed that computational designed peptides can be successfully employed as biosensors. In 2016 she successfully defended her PhD thesis and, together with the AFM group, moved to the University of Leeds (UK).
  • Aristeo Madera Rejon visited us from CINESTAV (Mexico) with a three-months fellowship awarded by the National Council for Science and Technology (Conacyt, Mexico).
  • Cristina Vargas, from CINESTAV (Mexico), spent a sabbatical year with us. Togheter we worked on evolving a set of ex novo designed peptides.
  • Anna Russo worked with us in the framework of her PhD in Genetics, Oncology and Clinical Medicine at the University of Siena (Italy). Her work with us focused on the experimental characterization of computational designed peptides for protein recognition. She successfully defender her PhD thesis in 2014, then moved to the University Federico II of Naples (Italy).
  • Giacinto Scoles (Donner Professor of Science, Emeritus, at Princeton, US) is our scientific father and mentor. His motto, summarized as: “COLLABORATE, COLLABORATE, COLLABORATE!!!“, inspires us and guides us through our research as well as in our life. He seeded and mentored our team within the European Grant, 7FP, Ideas, ERC Advanced Grant ”Molecular Nanotechnology For Life Science Application (MONALISA): QUantitative Interactomics for Diagnostics, Proteomics and QUantitative Oncology (Quidroquo, proposal n. 269025, 2011-2016, PI: G. Scoles). In 2016, when the junior MONALISA teams he seeded reached independence, he moved to the CNR-NANOTECH (Lecce, Italy) to guide and inspire a new generation of researchers.