Development of a Hydrogel-Based 3D Printed Scaffold for Full Meniscus Replacement

Meniscal injuries are among the most common disorders affecting the knee joint and remain a major clinical challenge due to the limited intrinsic healing capacity of the meniscus, particularly in its avascular inner zone. Current treatments, including partial meniscectomy and meniscal repair, often fail to restore full function and may increase the risk of long-term joint degeneration and osteoarthritis. In this context, there is a clear need for alternative strategies capable of providing a ...

Building Spatial Skills: Development of Spatial abilities across the sensory systems in children with and without visual impairment

Spatial perception is a fundamental ability that enables humans to orient, navigate, and interact effectively with their environment. The main objective of my Ph.D. project was to investigate how spatial representations develop during early life, and how sensory experience shapes the unisensory and multisensory mechanisms supporting spatial perception. In particular, my Ph.D. aimed at: i) characterising the development of auditory spatial localisation abilities during early childhood; ii) exa...

RAGAZZI INTERROTTI Maschilità, salute mentale e TikTok: un’etnografia digitale

This thesis examines the relationship between cisgender men and mental health on TikTok, interrogating the ways in which psychological distress is experienced, narrated, and made visible within a deeply performative digital space. Drawing on a three-year digital ethnography, the research investigates how mental health has come to function as a central site for the production of the self, the reproduction of masculinities, and affective governance, situated at the intersection of embodied expe...

Towards Safe Embodied Intelligence: Learning Contact-Rich Manipulation from Impedance Control to Multimodal Foundation Models

Safe physical interaction remains one of the key barriers to deploying robots in unstructured real-world environments. Contact-rich tasks such as insertion, assembly, tool use, and fine manipulation require robots not only to complete a task, but to do so while regulating force, adapting to uncertainty, and avoiding damage to themselves, their surroundings, and the objects they handle. This PhD thesis addresses that challenge by developing approaches for safe learning in contact-rich rob...

Motor strategies for spatial interaction in visually impaired children: towards the development of a multisensory device for sensorimotor rehabilitation

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SYSTEMS, HEALTHCARE SERVICES AND CIVIL LIABILITY

La ricerca nonché l’elaborato si concentrano sull’impatto che i progressi scientifici e tecnologici— in particolare della robotica e dell’intelligenza artificiale — hanno avuto e continuano ad avere nei rapporti contrattuali e nel sistema della responsabilità civile a livello europeo, con specifico riguardo al settore sanitario. La potenza di calcolo odierna, alla luce della capacità di processare volumi massivi di dati, consente l’analisi dei dati clinici contemporanei, superando e ampliando...

Engineering network complexity to decode emergent neuronal dynamics and early dysfunction in ALS

Neurodegenerative diseases such as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) arise from progressive alterations in neural network organization that precede overt neurodegeneration. Identifying the mechanisms behind these early dysfunctions remains challenging, as neural behavior emerges from cross-scale organizational interactions. In vitro models simplify this complexity while preserving essential physiological features and are therefore critical for dissecting the principles underlying neural net...

Optical Characterization of Natural and Anthropogenic Aerosols Using ChAMBRe Experiments & Field Campaigns

This thesis investigates the optical and physicochemical properties of natural and anthropogenic aerosols through laboratory experiments and field campaigns. Controlled chamber studies were performed in the ChAMBRe facility to evaluate the effects of dilution, particle size distribution, and aging processes on aerosol optical properties using instruments including SMPS, OPS, AE33, MWAA, BLAnCA, and PAX. In addition, field measurements conducted in Multedo (Italy) and Lahore (Pakistan) were us...

Rappresentare l’Equatoria Esplorazioni nilotiche, avventura, espansionismo egiziano nella stampa geografica italiana di fine Ottocento (1870-1900)

Il presente lavoro analizza la percezione e la rappresentazione della provincia d'Equatoria — estrema propaggine meridionale del Sudan turco-egiziano, fondata nel 1871 e dissoltasi nel 1889 — nel panorama culturale ed editoriale italiano della seconda metà dell'Ottocento. Attraverso un corpus eterogeneo di fonti — riviste geografiche specializzate, periodici illustrati di divulgazione e letteratura di viaggio — lo studio ricostruisce le dinamiche con cui l'Italia post-unitaria elaborò e trasf...