Paola Luciani

Paola Luciani (she/her) is Full Professor of Pharmaceutical Technology at the University of Bern, Switzerland since 2019 and Director of Study of the Bachelor in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the Department of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences since 2020.

She obtained her M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Chemical Sciences at the University of Rome La Sapienza, Italy, and subsequently worked as Postdoctoral Fellow at the Research Center for Colloids and Surface Science of the University of Florence, Italy. In 2009 she joined the Drug Formulation and Delivery group headed by Prof. JC Leroux at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, as postdoctoral scientist and as group leader. In 2015 she was appointed Associate Professor for Phospholipids in Drug Development at the Institute of Pharmacy of the University of Jena, Germany (endowed professorship financially supported by Lipoid GmbH). In 2017 she has been named Emerging Investigator 2017 by the Royal Society of Chemistry. She received the Breaking Barriers Breakthrough Award of the Focus Group Skin and Mucosal Delivery during the 2024 Annual Meeting of the Controlled Release Society.

The Agency Council of Swissmedic elected her specialist of the Human Medicines Expert Committee (HMEC) in 2021 and of the Veterinary Medicines Expert Committee (VMEC) in 2023. In 2023 she was also elected member of the NANO Working Party (Nanomedicine) by the EDQM European Pharmacopoeia Commission.

In 2024 Paola was elected vice-President of the CRS Local Chapter Germany-Austria Switzerland (DeChAt) and she is currently organizing the 2025 DeChAt Local Chapter meeting in Bern.

Since 2019 she is invited member of the Scientific Advisory Council of the Phospholipid Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany. She is a member of the Swiss Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences. Since 2023 she is invited member of the Steering Committee of the Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine Platform of the University of Bern. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the journal OpenNano since 2022; she served as Associate Editor of the journal Biochemistry and Biophysics Reports (Elsevier) in the years 2016-2018; she was guest member of the APV Focus Group Drug Delivery (2017-2021).

Since 2021 Paola is Faculty member of the Equal Opportunities Commission, role she formerly had also at the University of Jena (2016- 2019). In 2018-2019 she was mentor of the online STEM mentoring platforms for female pupils Cybermentor.de, since 2020 mentor in the SCS Swiss Women in Chemistry Mentorship Program, since 2022 mentor in the EPSA (European Pharmaceutical Students Association) Mentoring Project and since 2023 mentor in the CRS Young Scientist Committee Mentoring Program.

Research Interests

Prof. Luciani´s research focuses on the design and characterization of lipid-derived and bio-inspired drug delivery systems for the treatment and diagnosis of chronic multifactorial diseases, such as fibrosis, endometriosis and inflammatory diseases.
Together with her interdisciplinary team of pharmacists, chemists, biochemists and engineers, she investigates novel approaches to achieve sustained drug delivery, including additive manufacturing.