PhD Student

Clarissa Poles

Prof. Andrea Danani,PhD

Prof. Danani received the Dipl-Ing degree in Physics from ETH in Zuerich in 1987. After the Ph.D. degree at SISSA/ISAS in Trieste in 1992, he worked with a post-doctoral postion for many years at several Physics Departments (Politecnico di Torino, Università Statale of Milano and Università di Genova) and as scientific collaborator by the Swiss National Supercomputing Center (CSCS) in Manno. His scientific activity was first centered on the modelization of many-electron systems and their phase transitions and later on the description of surface diffusion of adatoms in metals using analytical models and several numerical simulation methods like Cluster Variation Method, Monte Carlo and Molecular dynamics. At CSCS, he also organized camps for swiss students (C3-Campus) in applied informatics. Since 2000, Prof. Danani works at SUPSI as scientific collaborator and teacher, where he received the Professor title in 2006 and is now affiliated to IDSIA, the Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence. He has been project leader of more than ten projects related to the numerical simulation and the modelization of several systems mainly at the molecular level: polymer nanocomposites, biological systems in interaction with drugs and DNA/RNA with related structure-based virtual screening, macromolecules for drug delivery, protein/protein interaction for neurodegenerative problems

Gianvito Grasso, PhD

Gianvito Grasso is a Researcher and Lecturer at the Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence (IDSIA) in Switzerland, specializing in biophysics, molecular modeling, and machine learning. He holds a Ph.D. in Computational Science from the University of Italian Switzerland and has authored more than 50 peer- reviewed publications. Currently, he leads several national and international projects funded by competitive grants and private companies. He serves as a reviewer and academic editor for multiple international peer-reviewed journals focused on molecular biophysics and computational science.

Filip Stojceski, PhD

Filip obtained his Ph.D. in Computational Sciences in 2025 at USI- Università della Svizzera Italiana. His expertise is in the Molecular dynamics and in Machine-learning fields applied to biological systems, with a main focus on peptide engineering.

Marcello Miceli, PhD

Marcello’s research focuses on leveraging computational techniques—specifically molecular modeling and machine learning—to unravel the molecular mechanisms underlying physiological and pathological phenomena. Building on expertise developed during his PhD, he specializes in the molecular characterization of proteins associated with neurodegenerative diseases. His primary objective is to investigate the fundamental drivers behind the onset of these pathologies. By employing a mechanistic approach using molecular dynamics, he seeks to unveil the complex structure-to-function relationships of proteins. Additionally, Marcello possesses wet-lab experience in protein expression and purification.

Vanni Doffini, PhD

Vanni is an interdisciplinary researcher at the interface of chemistry and machine learning. His work focuses on the development and application of machine learning methods for chemical process modeling and protein optimization, alongside studies of scaling laws in hierarchical problems in (bio)chemistry. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Basel and his B.Sc. and M.Sc. from ETH Zurich, and is currently a researcher at the Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence (IDSIA).