Biographical notes

Dr. Nicolina Sciaraffa obtained her master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from Sapienza University of Rome in 2016. She was recognised as an ‘Excellent Graduate’ by Fondazione Roma Sapienza. Her thesis on the use of neuroelectrical imaging and multi-subject connectivity to develop a model for describing cognitive empathetic processes was awarded as the best thesis on disability. In 2020, she received her Ph.D. in Morphogenesis and Tissue Engineering (Biophysics curriculum) from the same university. Her thesis was titled ‘Translation of Neurophysiological models from Laboratory to Real Environment by means of Artificial Intelligence methodologies’.

Until July 2021, she worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Molecular Medicine. After that, she worked in technology transfer in neuroscience for a spin-off company. In 2022, she completed a second-level master’s course in Data Science and Big Data Analytics at the University of Palermo. Her thesis was titled ‘Machine Learning Approach for Differential Expression Analysis Based on Ensemble Feature Selection Applied to Transcriptomics Big Data’. Since the end of 2022, she has been a member of the Advanced Data Analysis group at the Ri.MED Foundation.

Scientifical activity

Dr Nicolina Sciaraffa’s research at the Ri.MED Foundation focuses on the use of artificial intelligence techniques for the design of RNA therapies (antisense oligonucleotides), the optimisation of microRNA target genes prediction and the detection of cellular senescence from images. In addition, much of her work is devoted to supporting the analysis of transcriptomic data, in particular single-cell RNA-Seq.

She is currently the author of more than 30 articles published in peer-reviewed scientific journals (Scopus h-index: 17).