Cum Laude PhD on Biofabrication for Diabetes - Congrats Davide!

Huge congratulations Davide Ribezzi for the completing and defending an outstanding PhD thesis on "Biofabrication for Diabetes" !

For the exceptional work spanning research, innovation and entrepreneurship, Davide has received the doctorate Cum Laude! In the past 4 years, Davide has been a pillar and a source of inspiration for everyone in the lab. His passion and creativity have been contagious, and helped making possible several highly challenging projects that were running in the lab. He connected bioprinting, biomaterials design, stem cell biology, optogenetics, and diabetes research.

In particular, Davide played a central role in the ENLIGHT (https://enlightproject.eu/) EU consortium, but also managed to connect his project with SPRIND, expanding what our group could do in the context of#bioprinting the endocrine pancreas.

Among published key innovations from his Thesis (with more to come):

- Introducing Embedded extrusion Volumetric Printing, combining extrusion technologies with tomographic light-based printing: https://advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/adma.202301673

- Understanding the role of MW and gelatin reproducibility on volumetric printing: https://advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202409355 

- contributing to the validation of the GRACE technology: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09436-7 

- review how #biofabrication and #synbio techniques can help in pancreas tissue engineering:  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167779925000903

- establish a pancreas model #bioprinting iPSC-derived islets: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5713663 

Beyond the science, it has been an extreme honour and pride to see Davide grow constantly, while facing the big challenges that come with research work. Thank you for these years, and I am looking forward to see your next steps now at Amsterdam. Shout out to the other members of the promotion team Jos Malda, and Pere Catlaa, who brought stem cells in Davide’s project, and to the paranymphs Marieme and Marc. Thanks also to all the examiners that participated in assessing the thesis and in the viva, particularly to those that travelled from afar Christophe Moser Lorenzo Moroni Jeffrey Beekman Tina Vermonden Bart Spee Marianne Verhaar Daniela Salvatori and to all the partner from the ENLIGHT project!