Vittoria Martinelli

Research Assistant

Short Bio

Vittoria Martinelli graduated with honours in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Naples Federico II in June 2021, with a research thesis titled "A Multicellular PID to Distribute Control Across a Microbial Consortium." She earned her Ph.D. in Information and Communication Technology for Health at the same university in February 2025, under the supervision of Professor Mario di Bernardo.

Her research lies at the intersection of Synthetic Biology and control theory, with a specialization in the design, analysis, and validation of feedback control strategies for microbial populations. She has developed and validated several multicellular control systems to regulate gene expression within microbial consortia, employing both analytical and computational approaches. Her recent work focuses on genetic feedback mechanisms that enable cells to autonomously regulate population density and dynamically manage consortium composition.

Publications

Journal papers:

• Martinelli, V., Fiore, D., Salzano, D., & di Bernardo, M. (2025), Multicellular PID control for robust regulation of biological processes.  Journal of the Royal Society Interface, Vol. 22, Issue 222.

• Martinelli, V., Salzano, D., Fiore, D., & di Bernardo, M. (2023). Multicellular PD Control in Microbial Consortia. IEEE Control Systems Letters, 7, 2641 - 2646.

• Martinelli, V., Salzano, D., Fiore, D., & di Bernardo, M. (2022). Multicellular PI control for gene regulation in microbial consortia. IEEE Control Systems Letters, 6, 3373-3378.

Preprints:

• Campanile, G.*, Martinelli, V.*, Salzano, D., &  Fiore, D. (2025), Regulating population density through antithetic feedback control of cell growth. biorXiv 

• Martinelli, V., Fiore, D., Salzano, D., and di Bernardo, M. (2025), Root Contours Guided Design of a Multicellular PID Controller. biorXiv (Accepted at the 33rd Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation)

• Campanile, G., Martinelli, V., Salzano, D.,  Fiore, D. & di Bernardo, M. (2024), In silico analysis of metabolic burden effects on a multicellular integral controller. biorXiv (Accepted at the 23rd European Control Conference)

*Authors contributed equally to the work.