Dr. Antonio D’Amore is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Surgery and Bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. D’Amore received his MS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Palermo, Italy, in 2004.  He continued his studies at the Imperial College of London, United Kingdom, obtaining in 2007 an MS in Biomedical Engineering.  In 2011, Dr. D’Amore earned his PhD in Biomechanics and Tissue Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh/University of Palermo. Dr. D’Amore also serves as group leader and head of the cardiac tissue engineering program at Fondazione RiMED.  RiMED is an international partnership between the Italian Government, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) aiming to establish a world class biomedical research and biotechnology center in Europe. His middle term mission as a RiMED group leader is to establish a successful cardiovascular tissue engineering program in Italy at the Biomedical Research and Biotechnology Center. The RiMED Cardiac Tissue Engineering laboratory, currently 28 scientist strong,  was established in 2020 and is located in Palermo, Italy.

Since 2011, Dr. D’Amore has been with the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, serving as a post-doc in tissue engineering and biomechanics. He continued on from 2013-2016 as a Research Associate, in early 2017 moving into the position of Research Assistant Professor and in 2023 into his current position of Associate Professor.  Since 2008, Dr. D’Amore has been a bioengineering industry consultant in both the U.S. and Italy. He is the author of more than 198 publications including peer-reviewed journal articles (>56), book chapters (2), international conference abstracts and extended abstracts (>115), biomedical devices patents applications (12), US, EU and Japan patents (9) and software to model biological systems (2). From 2007, he has been the recipient of numerous research awards, he obtained as PI or Co-I, which cumulatively secured funding for more than $11 M. Dr. D’Amore is the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Neoolife – a Pitt startup focusing on tissue engineering heart valve technology. In 2018, Dr. D’Amore won the Franco Strazzabosco Career Award for Young Engineers from the Italian Scientists and Scholars in North America Foundation, this recognition is granted under the patronage of the Italian president of the Republic as tribute to the entrepreneurial courage of Italian engineers, who strive in applying scientific discoveries to public advantage. Dr D’Amore is senior member of the US National Academy of Inventors.

Dr. D’Amore’s research seeks to couple a mechanistic understanding of the relationship between scaffolds micro-structure, mechanics, and endogenous tissue growth with the development of novel biomaterials for tissue engineering strategies. The focus of his research is upon unmet clinical needs in cardiovascular diseases. Recent areas of interest include: quantitative histology and biomaterials micro-structure image-based analysis, structural modeling strategies to guide tissue engineering scaffold fabrication, mechanical and topological conditioning for tissue elaboration, development of cardiac restrain devices, vascular grafts and engineered heart valves. Dr. D’Amore’s project funding (selected and currently active) comes from the National Institutes of Health (STTR # R41HL167502), the European Research Council (ERC-CoG BIOMITRAL # 101002561, ERC-PoC BioChord # 101123370 with host RiMED Italy), the RiMED Foundation, the Italian Minister of Health (PoC 2022), the Italian Minister of Education(PRIN2023) as well industrial partners such as Advanced Solutions Life Sciences and Adeka Corporation.

View a list of Dr. D’Amore’s publications here.