Dr. Annalisa De Pastina is an expert in Micro/Nano Electro Mechanical Systems and piezoelectric transduction. She has 10 years of experience in the field of mechanical sensors and actuators, specializing in microtechnology, microfluidics and thin film depositions.

In 2014, she graduated in Biomedical Engineering from Sapienza University of Rome, in Italy, and in 2018 she obtained her PhD in Microengineering from EPFL, Switzerland , working in the Advanced NEMS Group led by Prof. Guillermo Villanueva. At EPFL, she gained strong expertise in mechanical resonators design, microfabrication and advanced characterization, via the development of a sensing platform for single bacterial cells detection via piezoelectrically actuated suspended microchannel resonators.

Subsequently, Dr. De Pastina joined the group of Prof. Martin Hegner at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, where she worked for 2 years as a postdoc in the field of nanomechanical biosensing, surface functionalization and real time in-situ molecular recognition.

Dr. De Pastina is currently a senior scientist in piezoMEMS at Silicon Austria Labs, where she is coordinating the Piezoelectric Microsystems Technologies Research Unit, leading collaborative projects with industrial and academic partners, and supervising several PhD Students. Her work focuses on the development of novel piezoelectric MEMS sensors and actuators, such as MEMS microspeakers, MEMS microphones or Piezoelectric Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducers, with the goal to push the boundaries of current technological limitations and pave the way for the next generation of industrial applications.