Short Bio
After earning the B.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Padova (IT), Massmio moved to the University of Pavia (IT), where he earned the M.Sc. in Bioengineering and the Ph.D. in Bioengineering and Bioinformatics. From 2014 to May 2020, he worked at the Center of Health Technologies and in the Electrical, Computer, and Biomedical Engineering Department at the University of Pavia (IT), focusing his research on Synthetic Biology.
Between 2017 and 2020, he served as a Visiting Researcher in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Center for Synthetic Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA.
In 2020, he moved to the University of Padova, where, after a senior postdoctoral fellowship at the Dept of Information Engineering, he is now a researcher at both the Department of Molecular Medicine and Information engineering.
Working in collaboration with the two departments, he started a novel research line in Synthetic Biology, applied to Microbiology, by adopting Systems Biology as a bridging discipline between the two scientific fields.
In particular, his current research aims to model quorum-sensing mechanisms complexities involved in bacterial Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) and to design engineered bacterial and phage controllers as novel therapeutics against AMR, as well as cell-free biosensors.
Broadly speaking, his main research activities include, but are not limited to, rational design, construction, and modeling of synthetic genetic controllers and logic in living cells, CRISPR interference technology, cross-kingdom cell communication, and the microbiome.
He teaches Systems Biology for the Control Systems Engineering Master course, Synthetic Biology for the Biotechnology Bachelor course, and Principles of Synthetic Biology for the PhD course in Information Engineering.
Academic Degree
PhD in Bioengineering and Bioinformatics at the Electrical, Computer, and Biomedical Engineering Department, University of Pavia, Italy
Obtained on January 31, 2019
Thesis title: Overcoming Metabolic Burden in Synthetic Biology: A CRISPR-interference Approach
Advisors: Prof. Paolo Magni, Prof. Lorenzo Pasotti
Master's Degree in Bioengineering at the Electrical, Computer, and Biomedical Engineering Department, University of Pavia, Italy
Obtained on July 14, 2015
Thesis title: Progettazione bottom-up di sistemi biologici: debug di circuiti genetici interconnessi mediante approcci in vivo ed in silico
Advisor: Prof. Paolo Magni
Bachelor's degree in Biomedical Engineering at the Department of Information Engineering, University of Padova, Italy
Obtained on July 24, 2012
Thesis title: Il sistema Bose Electroforce per la caratterizzazione del comportamento a trazione di pericardio bovino e porcino
Advisor: Prof. Andrea Bagno
Appointments
Fixed Term Researcher - RtdA IBIO/01
at the Departments of Molecular Medicine and of Information Engineering, University of Padova, Italy
May 2024 - Present
Term-contract research assistant
at the Department of Information Engineering, University of Padova, Italy
Jan 2024 - May 2024
Project: Simulation of a System for Treating Antibiotic Resistance through Phage Therapy
Supervisor: Prof. Luca Schenato
Post-doctoral research fellow
at the Department of Information Engineering, University of Padova, Italy
Jan 2022 - Dec 2023
Italian B senior research grant in support of innovative and excellent research projects proposed by independent scholars
Project: Engineering Bacteria to Fight Antimicrobial Resistance: Multi-Agent Modeling and Control of Bacterial Communication for Quorum Sensing Disruption
Supervisor: Prof. Luca Schenato
Post-doctoral research fellow
at the Department of Information Engineering, University of Padova, Italy
May 2020 - Sep 2021
Project: Development of a Genetic Controller for Regulating the Growth of an Engineered Bacterium with Techniques of Synthetic Biology
Supervisor: Prof. Barbara Di Camillo
Visiting Post-doctoral Researcher
at Del Vecchio Laboratory, Synthetic Biology Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
Jan 2020 - Feb 2020
Supervisors: Prof. Domitilla Del Vecchio
Post-doctoral research fellow
at BMS Laboratory (Dept. Industrial and Information Engineering) and the Center for Health Technologies - CHT, University of Pavia, Italy
Oct 2018 - Apr 2020
Project: Optimization of the Expression of Recombinant Enzymes in Operon and Genome-wide Analysis of Possible New Action Sites for Increasing Productive Yield. Project and Experimental Activities
Supervisor: Prof. Paolo Magni
Visiting PhD Student
at Del Vecchio Laboratory, Synthetic Biology Centre - SBC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
Aug 2017 - Mar 2018
Supervisor: Prof. Domitilla Del Vecchio
Research Interests
Synthetic & Systems Biology, interdisciplinary research, enabling technologies:
- Microbial Engineering, in particular:
- Quorum-sensing mechanisms in bacterial pathogens
- Phage engineering
- AMR in P.aeruginosa, K.pneumoniaeand A.baumannii
- Tick and vector-borne disease-associated microbiota
- Metataxonomics
- Synthetic Biology fundaitional research, in particular:
- Biomolecular feedback controllers
- Quorum sensing and quorum quenching stability
- Metabolic Burden
- CRISPR-interference technology and control
- Cell-free toehold switch biosensors
- LLM for genome designs
Awards
Gold medal at the iGEM 2025 Great Jamboree
Nov 2025 - Paris, FranceSilver medal, best entrepreneurship prize, and best bioremediation project nominee at the iGEM 2024 Great Jamboree
Nov 2024 - Paris, FranceGold medal and best therapeutics project nominee at the iGEM 2023 Great Jamboree
Nov 2023 - Paris, FranceBest Oral presentation, Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Conference (BBCC)
Nov 2022 - OnlineGraduation to Professional Information Engineer, Italian legislation
Dec 2015 - Pavia, Italy"Silvio Cavalcanti Award" for the Best Master's Thesis, from the National Group of Bioengineering
Sep 2015 - Brixen, Italy
Membership
IEEE Control Systems Society - Systems and Synthetic Biology Technical Committee,
Member since 2024iGEM Technology - Engineering Committee,
Member since 2023American Society of Microbiology,
Joung International Ambassador since 2023Engineering Biology Research Consortium Student and Postdoc Ass. (EBRC),
Post-doctoral Member since 2023International Society of Computational Biology (ISCB),
Post-doctoral Member since 2023American Society of Microbiology (ASM),
Post-doctoral Member since 2021European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID),
Post-doctoral Member since 2021National Bioengineering Group (GNB),
Founding Member since 2018IEEE-EMB group,
Young Professional Member since 2016American Institute of Chemical Engineers - Society for Biological Engineering (AICHE-SBE),
Post-doctoral Member since 2016MIT-Visiting Student Association (ViStA),
Co-founder since 2016
Referee, Editor, Conference organization
Journal referee:
IEEE Control Systems Letters, Scientific Reports, MDPI journals, Frontiers, BMC Bioinformatics, IEEE Transactions journalsJournal Editor:
LNBI, Frontiers in Systems BiologyConference organizer:
IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC) 2025 - Special Session Chair, IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology conference (EMBC) 2025 - Special session chair, IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC) 2024 - Special session organizer, Computational Intelligence methods for Bioinformatics & Biostatistics (CIBB) 2023 - Proceedings committeeConference referee:
IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC) 2023-2025, IEEE European Control Conference (ECC) 2022
Participation to funded projects
Granted funding and responsibility:
FISA National Grant
READY: Responsive Early Antibiotic resistance Detection and therapY: a biological data analytics, automation and artificial intelligence based approach
2025 - 2028, Dept. Information Engineering, University of Padova
Role: WP Leader
National Cariparo Foundation Excellence
Restoring Antibiotic Sensitivity in Bacteria: A Synthetic Biology Approach (ReActing)
2022 - 2026, Dept. Information Engineering, University of Padova
Role: WP Leader
Dept. Information Engineering SEED Project
tRajectoriEs of baCtErial NeTwoRks from Healthy to Disease State and Back (RECENTRE)
2020-2021, Dept. Information Engineering, University of Padova
Role: Collaborator, metagenomics analysis
National Cariplo Foundation Project
Sustainable Bioconversion of Lactose into Ethanol: Field Testing of a Demonstration Plant to Close the Valorization Cycle of Dairy Waste
2017-2020, Electronic, Compputer and Biolmedical Engineering Dept., University of Pavia
Role: Collaborator, Optimization of strains for industrial scale-up
Teaching
AYs 2023/24 - 20024/25: Teacher in charge
Principles of Synthetic Biology (4 CFU),
PhD course in Information Engineering, Dept. Information Engineering
University of PadovaAYs 2022/23 - 2023/24 - 20024/25: Teacher in charge
Synthetic Biology (2 CFU),
Bachelor's degree course in Biotechnology, Dept. Biology and Biotechnology
University of PadovaAYs 2021/22 - 2022/23 - 2023/24 - 20024/25: Lecturer
Systems Biology (2 CFU),
Master's degree course in Control Systems Engineering
University of PadovaAYs 2016/17 - 2017/18 - 2018/19: Invited lecturer,
Genome editing and CRISPR technologies (2 hours),
ADE seminar series, Dept. Public Health, Experimental and Forensic Medicine
University of PaviaAY 2016 - 2017: Teaching assistant,
Mathematics for newly registered students in Engineering (10 hours),
Intensive remedial course, Electrical, Computer, and Bioengineering Dept.
University of Pavia
Students Supervision
Co-supervisor for
1 PhD student in Information Engineering, 1 PhD student in Biology, 3 PhD students in Molecular Medicine
University of PadovaSupervisor for
6 BS students in Biomedical Engineering, 6 BS students in Biotechnology, 2 BS students in Biology, 1 MS student in Biotechnologies for Food Science
University of PadovaCo-supervisor for
2 BS students in Biomedical Engineering, 1 MS student in Medical Biotechnology, 2 MS students in Sanitary Biology, 1 MS student in Pharmacy, 1 MS student in Control Engineering, 1 MS student in Computer Engineering, 2 MS students in Bioengineering
University of PadovaCo-supervisor for
8 MS students in Bioengineering, 1 MS student in Advanced Biotechnology, 1 MS student in Biology and Genetics, 1 MS student in Medical and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology
University of Pavia
Selected Publications
The complete list of publications is available on Google Scholar
C Cimolato, L Schenato, G Giordano, M Bellato
The Role of Cheater Cells in Quorum Sensing Bacterial Cultures
2025 IEEE 64th Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), 4783-4790, 2025
DOI: 10.1109/CDC57313.2025.11312581I Zorzan, C Cimolato, L Schenato, M Bellato
Structural properties and asymptotic behavior of bacterial two-component systems
Frontiers in Systems Biology, 2025
DOI: 10.3389/fsysb.2025.1693064C Cimolato, G Selvaggio, L Marchetti, G Giordano, L Schenato, M Bellato
Quorum sensing model structures inspire the design of quorum quenching strategies
IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological, and Multi-Scale Communications, 2025
DOI: 10.1109/TMBMC.2025.3554671A Frusteri Chiacchiera, M Casanova, M Bellato, A Piazza, R Migliavacca, ...
Harnessing CRISPR interference to resensitize laboratory strains and clinical isolates to last resort antibiotics
Scientific Reports, 2024
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-81989-5M Bellato, A Frusteri Chiacchiera, E Salibi, M Casanova, D De Marchi, I Castagliuolo, MG Cusella De Angelis, P Magni, L Pasotti
CRISPR interference modules as low-burden logic inverters in synthetic circuits
Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology - synthetic biology, 2022
DOI:10.3389/fbioe.2021.743950HH Huang and M Bellato, Y Qian, P Carrdenas, L Pasotti, P Magni, D Del Vecchio
dCas9 regulator to neutralize competition in CRISPRi cirucits
Nature communications, 2021
DOI:10.1038/s41467-021-21772-6M Bellato, D De Marchi, C Gualtieri, E Sauta, P Magni, A Macovei, L Pasotti
A Bioinformatics Approach to Explore MicroRNAs as Tools to Bridge Pathways Between Plants and Animals. Is DNA Damage Response (DDR) a Potential Target Process?
Frontiers in plant science, 2019
DOI:10.3389/fpls.2019.01535L Pasotti, M Bellato, D De Marchi, P Magni
Mechanistic models of inducible synthetic circuits for joint description of DNA copy number, regulatory protein level, and cell load
Processes, 2019
DOI:10.3390/pr7030119L Pasotti, M Bellato, M Casanova, S Zucca, MG Cusella De Angelis, P Magni
Re-using biological devices: a model-aided analysis of interconnected transcriptional cascades designed from the bottom-up
Journal of Biological Engineering, 2017
DOI:10.1186/s13036-017-0090-3
Last update: 25-February-2026