Nino Grizzuti (Full Professor)
Nino Grizzuti (born in 1957) is Professor of Transport Phenomena at the University of Naples Federico II, where he spent most of his professional career.
He is author or co-author of more than 100 scientific papers, most of them published on peer-reviewed international Journals. His main research area is rheology, with particular emphasis on the relations between macroscopic rheological response and microstructural organization, including:
– Molecular modeling and rheology of polymer solutions and melts;
– Rheology and rheo-optics of liquid crystalline polymers and polymer blends;
– Phase transitions (both in absence and in presence of flow) of complex fluids;
– Rheology and rheo-optics of suspensions;
– Rheology of cement-based materials
Currently, his research is focused on the viscoelasticity of polymer melt swith specific architectures, the sol and gel properties of hydrogels and their implications on 3D-printing, the rheology of surfactant solutions.
He served as Officer in his University for several terms as Coordinator of the Undergraduate and Ph Studies and as Department Head. He is currently in the Member of the Governing Board of the University of Naples Library System.
At the national level, he is Coordinator of the Board of Digital and Library Resources at the Italian Conference of University Rectors.
A past member for several years of the Associate Editor Board of Journal of Rheology, he is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Polymer Engineering.
Nino has been consulting and counseling as a professional rheologist for several companies. Among them: Procter&Gamble, Perfetti Van Melle, ItalCementi, Anton Paar.
Rossana Pasquino (Associate Professor)
Rossana Pasquino, class 1982, received her Master degree in Chemical Engineering cum laude in 2005 at Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II (Unina), with a thesis on thermo-reversible gelation. She started her Ph.D. in 2005 dealing with suspensions of spheres in viscoelastic solutions, with a jointed project between Unina and KU Leuven, in Belgium, where she spent half of her Ph.D. course. She obtained her Ph.D. in 2008. After one year as Postdoc between Belgium and Italy, dealing with flow-induced microstructure, she won a Marie Curie position (with the initial training network “Dynacop”) and she moved to Heraklion, Crete, where she spent two years at FORTH, IESL, Heraklion, studying the dynamics of complex polymers.
She is a permanent researcher since 2012 at the Department of Chemical Engineering, Materials and Industrial Production Engineering (DICMaPI), Unina. She is Associate Professor since 2018 at the same department. She received the Italian habilitation to Ordinary Professor in 2018.
She teaches Rheology and Transport Phenomena to students of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering.
She was visiting professor at ETH, Zurich, Switzerland in 2015, with a project on microfluidics of micellar solutions and at Queen’s, Kingston, Canada in 2018 dealing with polymer degradation.
R. Pasquino is recognized for her work in the rheology of complex fluids, especially in the use of rheology as a tool to detect morphology and microstructural properties. She is involved in various aspects of the soft matter world, with particular attention to viscoelastic solutions, colloids and polymers.
She is the author of ~60 scientific works on peer-reviewed journals (h-index 18, number of citations~950).
She is an Associate Editor of Physics of Fluids since 2019 and she has been Academic Editor of AIP Advances for 4 years.
She was in the Organization Committee of the Annual European Rheology Conference (AERC) in 2018 and of Softcomp in 2022.
She is the recipient of the Distinguished Young Rheologist Award 2018, given by TA Instruments.
She is involved in various national and international projects.
Salvatore Costanzo (Assistant Professor)
Salvatore Costanzo obtained a master’s degree in Chemical Engineering at the University of Naples Federico II in September 2013. In October 2013, he was enrolled as a PhD student at the University of Crete (Department of Materials Science and Technology) and Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser, Polymer Group). He performed his PhD studies within the framework of the Initial Training Network Program Supolen (Marie Curie Actions). His PhD research focused on the link between the structure and rheological properties of complex polymer architectures in both linear and nonlinear regimes. He defended his PhD thesis in February 2017. In April 2017, he moved to the University of Montpellier, where he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratoire Charles Coulomb (UMR 5221) for one year and a half. His post-doctoral research concerned the physical and chemical properties of bio-based dendrimers and the sol-gel transition of gluten proteins in water-ethanol mixtures. In October 2018, he joined the Department of Chemical, Materials and Production Engineering at the University of Naples Federico II, first as a Research Fellow and, later (July 2019), as a researcher (RTDA). Since July 2022, he became assistant professor. Salvatore Costanzo is an expert in experimental rheology, with emphasis on nonlinear shear rheology of polymer melts and solutions. His current research activities focus on molecular rheology of polymers and on the sol-gel transition of bio-based hydrogels.
Aurelio Salerno (Researcher)
Aurelio Salerno obtained a master degree in materials engineering (2004) and a Ph.D. in Industrial Product and Process Engineering (2008) at the Department of Chemical, Materials and Production Engineering (DICMAPI) of the University of Naples Federico II. His Ph.D. thesis, focused on the control of porosity architecture of polymeric foams for biomedical applications, received the best Ph.D. thesis award issued by the Italian Association of Materials (AIMAT). As postdoc, he won a young researcher fellowship by the Italian National Research Council to work in the Institute for Polymers, Composites and Biomaterials (IPCB) in the framework of the project Tissuenet-The Italian Research Network on Tissue regeneration. In 2010 he was visiting researcher at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) and in 2011 he joined the Supercritical Fluids group in the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB). In 2016 he returned to Naples as senior postdoc at the Centre for Advanced Biomaterials for Health Care of the Italian Institute of Technology. In November 2022 he joined the RheoLab group of the DICMAPI working in the GOLBRAPOL project. His research interests span from polymers and composites processing and characterization, porous scaffolds design and fabrication, supercritical CO2 foaming/drying for biomedical applications.
Aurelio Salerno is co-author of 53 peer-reviewed articles in international journals and four book chapters (H-index 26, 2022, Scopus). He participated to several national and international research projects (one as P.I.), he supervised 15 studentship thesis (3 Ph.D. thesis) and the results of his work was presented at 40 national and international conferences.
He is editor of the Section ‘Cell-Biomaterial Interaction’ of the Journal of Functional Biomaterials and topic Editor of the special issue “Multifunctional Bio-Scaffolds for Cell Growth and Tissue Morphogenesis”.
Pietro Renato Avallone (Researcher)
Pietro Renato Avallone (class 1994) is a Post-doctoral researcher at the University of Sannio since February 2022.
He obtained a master’s degree in Chemical Engineering in 2018 at the University of Naples Federico II, with a master thesis in rheology, in which he investigated the rheological behaviour of hydro-soluble cement additives for 3D printer.
In November 2018, he started his Ph.D. at the University of Naples Federico II, in collaboration with the world leading confectionery company, Perfetti Van Melle. His Ph.D. research focused on the gelatin gels replacement, contained in soft candies, with a green hydrocolloid. He defended his Ph.D. thesis in May 2022.
He co-supervised 5 master thesis students and 3 bachelor thesis students; moreover, He participated to several National and International conferences.
Since 2019, He published, as author or co-author, 7 peer-reviewed articles in International Journals.
His current scientific interests include:
- Gelation kinetics of hydrocolloidal solutions;
- Link between rheological behavior and microstructure of soft matter;
- Phase Transition (such as crystallization phenomenon or sol-gel transition) of complex fluids.
Vincenzo Ianniello (PhD Student)
Vincenzo Ianniello obtained his Master’s degree in Chemical Engineering at the University of Naples Federico II on March 2019. His thesis work focused on the correlation between rheology and foamability of thermoplastic polymers and it was supported by BASF. From March until December 2019, he worked in the Department of Chemical, Materials and Production Engineering at the University of Naples Federico II as a Research Fellow on the physical foaming of thermoplastic polymers.
In November 2019, he started his PhD within the framework of the project RHEOPOLAR funded by the Dutch Polymer Institute. His research activities deal with the link between rheological properties and macromolecular architecture of polyolefins. More specifically, his work is mainly focused on solution rheology and theoretical scaling laws of polymers solutions. The work is in cooperation with the Department of Soft Materials at the ETH of Zurich. In September 2021, he won the first edition of “cREO giovani” organized by the Italian Society of Rheology.
Nicola Antonio Di Spirito (PhD student)
Nicola Antonio Di Spirito studied at University of Naples Federico II, where he earned his Master degree in Industrial Bioengineering cum laude in 2019, with a dissertation thesis on bubble rupture and bursting velocity of complex fluids. In 2018, he started at Biesse Group Spa as product manager, and he was in charge for areas of Israel, Lebanon, Turkey, UK, USA, Canada, Middle East, Asia, China, India and Oceania. Since November 2021, he has been working as PhD researcher at University of Naples Federico II, dealing with experimental rheology. His current research focuses on comprehension of the rheology of hydrogels and biopolymers mixtures for bioprinting.
Simona Russo Spena (PhD student)
Simona Russo Spena received her Master’s degree in Chemical Engineering cum laude in 2018 at Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II (UniNa), with a thesis on the correlation between rheology and 3D printability of a thermo-reversible gel system.
After a brief experience in industry, she started her Ph.D. in 2021 in collaboration with the world leading confectionery company, Perfetti van Melle. In this context, her research focuses on the rheological characterization and printability of hydrocolloids from plant source for replacing those of animal origin.
Ilaria Cusano (PhD Student)
Ilaria Cusano graduated in Chemical Engineering on May 2022, at the University of Naples Federico II. Her thesis work dealed with nonlinear rheology of ionic surfactants solutions; after graduation, she won a fellowship to continue her research on surfactants, during which she investigated dilute micellar solutions rheology. Starting from November 2022, she is a PhD student at the University of Naples Federico II, working on Rheology of PET foams, in collaboration with the Gurit company.