Paola Luciani (she/her) is Full Professor of Pharmaceutical Technology at the University of Bern, Switzerland, since 2019. 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.
In 2021 the Agency Council of Swissmedic elected her specialist of the Human Medicines Expert Committee (HMEC).
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.