I have a broad background in hematology, with specific training and expertise in hematopoietic stem cell biology and the clinical aspects of platelet-related disorders. Before establishing my research group in 2007, I served as a staff physician in the Laboratory of Clinical Biochemistry at the IRCCS San Matteo Foundation and the University of Pavia, Italy. In 2005-2006, I was a Visiting Professor at Dana Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard Medical School. Since 2007, I have led a research group with a cross-institutional presence at the Department of Molecular Medicine at the University of Pavia and the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Tufts University, USA. The aim of our program is to integrate biological and bioengineering approaches to study hematopoiesis and the bone marrow microenvironment. My research is centered on understanding how various components of the bone marrow niche regulate platelet production. In 2011, I developed a bioengineered 3D model of human bone marrow using porous silk, which effectively mimics the physiology of the living bone marrow environment. This model was further refined in 2015 and 2017, allowing us to generate functional platelets ex vivo, offering potential clinical applications in blood component production. By 2021, we had demonstrated that this advanced tissue system could also be utilized as a novel tool for investigating pathological mechanisms in human platelet production and evaluating drug efficacy. In 2024, my group generated a silk bioink as new approach to mimic the viscosity of the native bone marrow environment. In 2025, we used a modified silk scaffold to generate red blood cells in vitro from human hematopoietic progenitor cells. Recently, our company, Silk4B, was incorporated with the support of the European Innovation Council.