In 2016, Dr Nicole Zoratto obtained her master’s degree in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technologies at Sapienza, University of Rome (Italy). Before graduating, she undertook her 8-month master research project at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Science, King’s College London, under the supervision of Prof Cécile A. Dreiss. In the same year, she started her PhD in Pharmaceutical Science at Sapienza, University of Rome. The research project was focused on the development of innovative polysaccharide-based scaffolds for drug delivery applications. From November 2018 to August 2019, she joined the Khademhosseini laboratory at California Nanosystems Institute at UCLA as a visiting graduate researcher. Specifically, her research project was mainly focused on the microfluidic assisted particle formations, followed by particle annealing to develop soft and beaded-based scaffolds for tissue engineering applications. She earned her PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences in December 2019 and continued to complete one year of post-doctoral research on polysaccharide-based hydrogels and nanogels in the Department of Drug Chemistry and Technologies, at Sapienza, University of Rome.