Paolo Decuzzi is a Senior Scientist and the Founding Director of the Laboratory of Nanotechnology for Precision Medicine at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Genoa, Italy. He also serves as an Adjunct Professor in the Division of Oncology, Department of Medicine, at Stanford University and is a co-founder of Chiromesh Therapeutics.
Dr. Decuzzi earned his M.Sc. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Bari (Italy) in 1997 and his Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Naples Federico II (Italy) in 2001, with a thesis on friction and adhesion at the nanoscale. In 2002, he was appointed Assistant Professor of Machine Design at the Polytechnic University of Bari and, in 2005, he became Associate Professor in the School of Medicine of the University ‘Magna Graecia’ of Catanzaro. There, he co-founded BioNEM – the Laboratory of BioNanotechnology and Engineering for Medicine – one of the first nano-engineering laboratories established within a School of Medicine worldwide. In October 2007, he joined The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston as an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering. In October 2010, he moved to Houston Methodist Hospital, where he served as a Professor of Biomedical Engineering until July 2015. There, he founded the Center for the Rational Design of Multifunctional Nanoconstructs, with financial support from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) and the U.S. National Cancer Institute, and served first as Co-Chair of the Nanomedicine Department and then as Interim Chair of the Translational Imaging Department. In July 2014, Dr. Decuzzi was awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant, POTENT, to design, synthesize and develop nanoconstructs for imaging and therapy in brain cancer. In July 2015, he joined the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa, where he established his current laboratory.
His subsequent ERC awards include the Proof of Concept grants RESOLVE (2019–2021), focused on nanoconstructs for treating acute ischemic stroke, and microMESH (2022–2024), supporting the preclinical validation and commercial development of an implantable drug delivery platform for brain cancer. His current research activities include GlioZERO and the FISA-funded NeuroMESH project, which support international collaboration and the development of advanced therapeutic approaches for high-grade gliomas, including the clinical translation of μMESH.
Dr. Decuzzi has been a visiting scientist at the Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (1998, 1999 and 2001), and a visiting professor at the Princeton Materials Institute at Princeton University (2003); the Heart and Lung Institute at The Ohio State University (2003 and 2004); the University of Texas Health Science Center (2006); and the Department of Radiology at Stanford Medicine (2018, 2019, 2020, 2021). His collaboration with Stanford has since expanded to include his current adjunct appointment in Oncology and advisory roles with SPARK Stanford and the Translational Research and Applied Medicine (TRAM) program, which he has held since 2024.
His research integrates engineering, computational modeling, pharmaceutical sciences and biomedical research to develop drug delivery systems for combination therapies and multimodal imaging. A central focus is understanding how the geometry and mechanical properties of therapeutic carriers influence their biological performance. His laboratory has developed platforms including μMESH for local drug delivery in brain tumors and microPLates (μPL) for sustained therapeutic delivery in osteoarthritis, with a strong emphasis on clinical translation.
Dr. Decuzzi has published over 250 scientific papers, with contributions spanning international peer-reviewed journals, international conference proceedings, and book chapters. He is an inventor on more than 10 patents in the field of nanomedicine and drug delivery. He co-founded the NEMB – NanoEngineering for Medicine and Biology – committee of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and is involved in multiple dissemination activities to promote collaboration between biomedical scientists and engineers. He has served on multiple NIH, NSF, ESF, and Italian Government review panels, and his research has received support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Department of Defense (DoD), and CPRIT in the United States, as well as the European Science Foundation (ESF) and ERC in Europe. In his career, he has secured more than US$20 million in extramural funding from U.S. and European sources. He has also mentored more than 10 trainees who now hold faculty positions at academic institutions worldwide.
Dr. Decuzzi is a Fellow of the Controlled Release Society and was inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) in 2026, in recognition of his contributions to the rational design of drug delivery systems through geometry and pharmaco-mechanics. He served as President of the Controlled Release Society Italy Local Chapter from 2020 to 2022 and currently serves on its Board of Arbitrators (Collegio dei Probiviri). He also contributed to the organization of the 2024 CRS Annual Meeting in Bologna and remains involved in initiatives connecting academic research with industrial and clinical translation.