Dr. Antonio D’Amore is a Research Assistant 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 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 in the laboratory of McGowan Institute Director William Wagner, PhD. He continued on from 2013-2016 as a Research Associate, and in early 2017 moving into his current position of Research Assistant 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 170 publications including peer-reviewed journal articles (>47), book chapters (2), international conference abstracts and extended abstracts (>110), biomedical devices patents applications (10), US patents (4) and software to model biological systems (2). From 2007, he has been the recipient of 2 pre-doctoral, 2 post-doctoral, and a number of other research awards, he obtained as PI or Co-I, which cumulatively secured funding for more than $8 M. Dr. D’Amore is the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of “Neoolife” a Pitt startup focusing on tissue engineering heart valve technology.

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 comes from the National Institutes of Health, European Research Council (ERC-CoG with host RiMED Italy), RiMED Foundation, The Wallace H. Coulter Foundation, and the University of Pittsburgh. Dr D’Amore is senior member of the National Academy of Inventors.

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