Nicola was born in Rome. He spent his childhood in the quiet Tuscan town of Pisa, and his teenager and University years in its even quieter outskirts.
In the last year of his PhD, he moved to the ETH Zurich, as a guest of the group of Macromolecular Chemistry (Dept. of Materials) then led by the late Ueli Suter. Having grown very fond of the group, the institution, the town, and the Swiss way of life, he stayed as a postdoc; during this period, he unsuccessfully tried to learn the intricacies of polymer physics, but reached the firm convinction that it is complicated. Quoting from the Master thesis of a later mentor of his (Prof. John Collett), Nicola's use of polymer physics is similar to that of a drunkard for a lamp post: more for support than for illumination. After a long soul-searching exercise, in 1998 Nicola switched from plastics, organic solvents and lasers to biomaterials, water, and cells, joining as an Oberassistent the group of Jeff Hubbell (at the time Professor at the ETH). A few years later (2003) he crossed the Channel, and became a proud member of the University of Manchester, first as a Senior Lecturer and from 2005 as full Professor.
Between 2006 and 2012 he was editor in chief of Reactive & Functional Polymers, a journal published by Elsevier. The impact factor doubled in the first three years of his tenure, but then editorship became less fun and more a job. He thus understood that his days as an editor were numbered and found a more than capable successor in the person of Prof. Alexander Bismarck (then Imperial, currently Universität Wien).
At the UoM, Nicola helped establishing the MRes course in Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine (BBRSC grants: BB/H015868/1 and BB/H021205/1), the NoWNANO Doctoral Training Centre ("A North West Nanoscience Doctoral Training Centre"; 2009-2018; EPSRC grant: EP/G03737X/1) and the Centre of Doctoral Training in Regenerative Medicine (2014-running; co-director 2014-15, director 2016-17; EPSRC/MRC grant EP/L014904/1).
In 2018 Nicola decamped to IIT, , where he had fondly hoped to devote himself entirely to research, leaving administration behind as a mercifully distant memory. He had not foreseen that the accumulated sins of past and present lives would duly catch up with him, propelling him to the role of Associate Director for Higher Education in 2020, and then creating in 2024 an aptly named aptly named Office for Higher Education, so called after what must have been an exhausting bout of creative speculation. In this capacity, his responsibilities have slowly but firmly expanded to encompass all matters in which his guilt can be established, inferred, or, failing that, briskly assumed.
Nicola has published >200 papers. h-index 62 (Google Scholar) / 55 (Scopus).
Selected recent publications:
J.P Stone, Richard d’Arcy, ... N. Tirelli, J.E. Fildes "Antioxidant Poly (propylene sulfide) Nanoparticles Ameliorate Ischemia-Reperfusion Injury and Improve Porcine Kidney Function Post-Transplantation" ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, 17 (2025) 59067. DOI: 10.1021/acsami.5c11562
G. Della Rosa, ... G. Palazzolo*, N. Tirelli "Magnesium alginate as a low-viscosity (intramolecularly cross-linked) system for the sustained and neuroprotective release of magnesium" Carbohydrate Polymers, 331 (2024) 121871. DOI: 10.1016/j.carbpol.2024.121871
A. Siani, L. Infante Teixeira, R. d’Arcy,*, I.V. Roberts, F. El Mohtadi, R. Donno, N. Tirelli, “Polysulfide nanoparticles inhibit fibroblast-to-myofibroblast transition via extracellular ROS scavenging and have potential anti-fibrotic properties”, Biomaterials Advances, 134 (2023) 213537. DOI: j.bioadv.2023.213537
R. d’Arcy, F. El Mohtadi, N. Francini, ... L. Kagan, C.L. Duvall, N. Tirelli, “A Reactive Oxygen Species-Scavenging ‘Stealth’ Polymer, Poly(thioglycidyl glycerol), Outperforms Poly(ethylene glycol) in Protein Conjugates and Nanocarriers and Enhances Protein Stability to Environmental and Biological Stressors” Journal of the American Chemical Society 144 (2022), 21304–21317. DOI: 10.1021/jacs.2c09232.
G. Scoponi, N. Francini, ... C. Capacchione, A. Athanassiou, N. Tirelli “Versatile preparation of branched polylactides by low-temperature, organocatalytic ring-opening polymerization in N-methylpyrrolidone, and their surface degradation behaviour” Macromolecules, 54 (2021) 9482–9495. DOI: 10.1021/acs.macromol.1c01503
