People

Dr. Leonardo Sacconi

Research Director at CNR
Leonardo Sacconi received a Master's degree in Physics in 2001 at the University of Florence. He, then, moved to Trento, where he obtained a Ph.D. in Physics. Visiting scientist at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA, in the group of Watt W. Webb. There he developed an imaging method to optically record neuronal action potentials using non-linear microscopy. From 2005 to 2011 he started new research lines on functional imaging of neuronal networks at the European Laboratory for Non-linear Spectroscopy (LENS) in the group of Francesco S. Pavone. In 2011 he became Researcher at the National Institute of Optics of the National Research Council (INO-CNR). He is now a Research Director at the Institute of Clinical Physiology of the National Research Council (IFC-CNR) and principal investigator of the OptoCARD Lab, where he is developing innovative imaging methodologies to increase our understanding of cardiac physiology. In 2020 he also joined the Institute for Experimental Cardiovascular Medicine of the University Freiburg, Germany.

E-mail: leonardo.sacconi@cnr.it
Phone number: +39 055 275 8280

Prof. Elisabetta Cerbai

Full professor at UNIFI
Elisabetta Cerbai received a Master’s degree in Biology in 1984 and a PhD in Pharmacology in 1991 at the University of Florence. Visiting scientist at the University of Cologne (Germany, 1986-1987), she moved to the University of Ferrara as assistant professor and then to Florence as associate professor. Since 2005 she is full professor of Pharmacology and has a long-standing experience on cardiac cell electrophysiology, arrhythmogenic mechanism and excitation contraction coupling. At cellular and tissue level, and in animal models and human cardiac cells and tissue, including human iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes and engineered tissue.

E-mail: elisabetta.cerbai@unifi.it
Phone number: +39 055 275 8207

Dr. Francesco Giardini

Researcher at CNR and Research Fellow at IEKM
Francesco Giardini received his master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering in 2018 from the University of Florence. In 2019, he was awarded a short-term EMBO fellowship to visit Dr. Martin Bishop at the Cardiac Electro-Mechanics Research Group (CEMRG) at King’s College London. In 2022, he obtained his PhD in Molecular Medicine from the University of Siena. He currently holds research positions at the Institute for Experimental Cardiovascular Medicine (IEKM), Freiburg, Germany, and at the URT OptoCARD of the Institute of Clinical Physiology (CNR), Italy. His research focuses on 3D analysis and computational modeling based on high-resolution whole-heart reconstructions to investigate cardiac electrical function. In 2025, he was awarded the DGK Research Fellowship from the German Society of Cardiology (DGK) and received funding through the European Rare Diseases Research Alliance (ERDERA) transnational call to join an international consortium working on arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy.

E-mail: francesco.giardini@cnr.it
francesco.giardini@uniklinik-freiburg.de
Phone number: +39 055 275 8280

Dr. Chiara Palandri

Research Fellow at CNR
Chiara Palandri obtained her Master's degree in Medical and Pharmaceutical Biotechnologies at the University of Florence in 2016. One year later, she started her PhD programm in Molecular Medicine at the University of Siena, with a particular interest in in vivo and in vitro modelling of genetically determined cardiomyopathies for functional studies and drug screening on single cardiomyocytes. She obtained her Ph.D. in 2021 and subsequently took up a Post-Doc position in the manner of the REPAIRE-heart project, where she focused her efforts on the production of living human cardiac slices from human myocardial samples to test the biocompatibility of LCE-based contractile patches to restore cardiac function.

E-mail: chiara.palandri@unifi.it
Phone number: +39 055 275 8281

Dr. Chiara Florindi

Research fellowship at CNR
Chiara Florindi received her Master’s degree in Biology in 2022 and her PhD in Converging Technologies for Biomolecular Systems in 2026, both from the University of Milano-Bicocca. Her research focuses on cardiac electrophysiology and the development of advanced optical platforms to study action potential propagation and arrhythmogenesis. She completed international visiting research periods at Harvard University (2024) and at the University of Bern (2025), where she worked on optical modulation of cardiac electrical activity and engineered cardiac tissue models. She currently works as a cardiac electrophysiologist, performing optical mapping studies to enhance predictive concepts in cardiac electrophysiology and arrhythmogenesis through high-resolution functional approaches.

E-mail: chiaraflorindi97@gmail.com
Phone number: +39 055 275 8281

Valentina Romanelli

PhD Student at UNIFI
Valentina Romanelli received her Bachelor's degree in Medical Engineering from the University of Rome – Tor Vergata in 2021. She continued her studies at the Campus Bio-Medico University in Rome, where she obtained a Master's degree in Biomedical Engineering in 2024. During her time there, she began collaborating with the OptoCARD Lab for her master's thesis, focusing on the feasibility and initial construction of a panoramic full-optical platform for optically stimulating and manipulating the epicardium of an entire mouse heart. In 2024, she began her PhD in Biomedical Sciences at the OptoCARD Lab in Florence, where she continues to work on refining the panoramic platform to enhance its usability for experiments and to develop software for the reconstruction and analysis of the collected data.

E-mail: valentina.romanelli@unifi.it
Phone number: +39 055 275 8281

Lorenzo Rezza

Scholarship at CNR
Lorenzo Rezza earned his Bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering in 2022 from the Campus Bio-Medico University in Rome. He continued his academic journey at the same institution, completing a Master's degree in Biomedical Engineering in 2025. During his Master's thesis, he began collaborating with the OptoCARD Lab, focusing on the development of software for managing a full-optical panoramic platform. He is currently continuing his collaboration with the OptoCARD Lab, where he is working on optimizing the previously developed software and integrating additional components essential to the experimental procedure.

E-mail: lorenzo.rezza@unifi.it
Phone number: +39 055 275 8281

Current research collaborators

- Peter Kohl, University of Freiburg, Germany
- Eva Rog-Zielinska, University of Freiburg, Germany
- Callum Zgierski-Johnston, University of Freiburg, Germany
- Raffaele Coppini, University of Florence, Italy
- Laura Sartiani, University of Florence, Italy
- Cecilia Ferrantini, University of Florence, Italy
- Chiara Tesi, University of Florence, Italy
- Corrado Poggesi, University of Florence, Italy
- Leslie M. Loew, University of Connecticut Health Center, US
- Gil Bub, McGill University, Canada
- Alex Quinn, Dalhousie University, Canada
- Martin Bishop, King's College London, UK
- Marina Campione, CNR, Italy
- Tania Zaglia, University of Padova, Italy
- Marco Mongillo, University of Padova, Italy
- Michael Regnier, University of Washington, US
- Francesco Regazzoni, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
- Francesco Lodola, University Milano Bicocca, Italy
- Marie Caroline Müllenbroich, University of Glasgow, UK
- Karin Sipido, KU Leuven, Belgium
- Alessio Gizzi, Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, Italy
- Leonardo Bocchi, University of Florence, Italy
- Iacopo Olivotto, University of Florence, Italy
- Camilla Olianti, King's College London, UK
- Mauro Giacca, King's College London, UK
- Fabio Recchia, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna di Pisa, Italy
- Nicole Fabbri, European Laboratory for Non-Linear Spectroscopy, Italy
- Godfrey Smith, University of Glasgow, UK

Meet the Team