Nuria OLIVA profile

Organic chemist by training, I graduated with a PhD in Medical Engineering and Medical Physics from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. My thesis focused on the development of bioadhesives to close gastrointestinal wounds and their biological and physicochemical interactions with healthy and diseased tissues. I also worked on the development of polymeric nanoparticles to selectively deliver chemotherapy to cancer cells but not healthy cells in the surrounding tissues, and demonstrated a decrease in side effects of chemotherapy and increased overall survival in a mouse model of breast cancer. After a short postdoctoral stay at Brigham and Women's Hospital (Harvard Medical School), I joined Imperial College London as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action fellow, in a collaborative project with IQS Barcelona aimed at developing hydrogel-based wound dressings to deliver therapeutic RNAs for the treatment of diabetic foot ulcers. During this time, I also spearheaded the in vivo studies and clinical translation of a novel DNA nanotechnology to deliver growth factors using cell traction forces. In 2020, I started my independent group in the department of Bioengineering as an Imperial College Research Fellow. During this time, I led various new research lines, established key international collaborations and received an EPSRC New Investigator Award. I am currently an associate professor and Junior Leader Fellow in IQS Barcelona, and part-time senior lecturer at Imperial College London.

I have expertise in the development of biomatrials and nanotechnology for healthcare applications. In particular, I am interested in understanding the biological and physicochemical interactions that exist between bio- and nano-materials, and how they can be leveraged to modulate gene expression and epigenetics in disease.

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=e6dmIacAAAAJ&hl=en