Profile photo Riccardo Levato

Riccardo Levato

Associate Professor

Strategic program(s):

Biography

Dr. Riccardo Levato is Associate Professor of Biofabrication and Regenerative Medicine at the Department of Orthopedics, University Medical Center Utrecht (UMCU) and at the Regenerative Medicine Center Utrecht. His main research focus are on the development of Biofabrication strategies to create bioprinted and lab-made tissue models, particularly for osteochondral regeneration. At UMCU, working at the frontier between engineering, biology and biomedical sciences,  he focuses especially on novel treatments for cartilage and osteochondral defects and their application in translational regenerative medicine. For his work on biofabrication, he was conferred the 2015 Julia Polak award by the European Society for Biomaterials and the 2016 Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine Young Investigator Award, the 2021 Jean Leray award from the European Society for Biomaterials, and the 2022 Robert Brown award from TERMIS-EU. In 2020, he also received a Starting Grant from the European Research Council, to develop novel volumetric bioprinting techniques to build models of the human bone marrow. Dr. Levato worked in several research groups across Europe: 3Bs, University of Minho, (Portugal); BioMatLab, Technical University of Milan (Italy), Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC, Spain), in the field of Biomaterials and Regenerative Medicine, and holds a cum laude PhD in Biomedical Engineering (obtained at the Technical University of Catalonia, Spain).

Research groups

Living Matter Engineering and Biofabrication

Research aim

Engineering and materials science help us to understand how stem cells behave. We translate this knowledge to build lab-made 3D tissues for regenerative medicine and personalized disease models.

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Recent publications

Adaptive and context-aware volumetric printing Sammy Florczak, Gabriel Größbacher, Davide Ribezzi, Alessia Longoni, Marième Gueye, Estée Grandidier, Jos Malda, Riccardo Levato
Nature, 2025, vol. 645, p.108-114
Advances in light-based process for cell-based 3D bioprinting applications Sang Jin Lee, Jinah Jang, Riccardo Levato
Materials Today Bio, 2025, vol. 33
Hybrid Plasmonic Bioresins and dECM-Based Materials for Volumetric Bioprinting of Vascular-Inspired Architectures Uxue Aizarna-Lopetegui, Gabriel Größbacher, Ada Herrero-Ruiz, Aitor Tejo-Otero, Malou Henriksen-Lacey, Riccardo Levato, Dorleta Jimenez de Aberasturi
ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, 2025, vol. 17, p.36982-36991
Development of a bioreactor and volumetric bioprinting protocol to enable perfused culture of biofabricated human epithelial mammary ducts and endothelial constructs Maj-Britt Buchholz, Paulina Nuñez Bernal, Nils Bessler, Camille Bonhomme, Riccardo Levato, Anne Rios
Biofabrication, 2025, vol. 17
Bioprinting and synthetic biology approaches to engineer functional endocrine pancreatic constructs Davide Ribezzi, Pere Català, Cataldo Pignatelli, Antonio Citro, Riccardo Levato
Trends in biotechnology, 2025, vol. 43, p.2133-2149
Multi-material Volumetric Bioprinting and Plug-and-play Suspension Bath Biofabrication via Bioresin Molecular Weight Tuning and via Multiwavelength Alignment Optics Davide Ribezzi, Jan Philip Zegwaart, Thomas Van Gansbeke, Aitor Tejo-Otero, Sammy Florczak, Joska Aerts, Paul Delrot, Andreas Hierholzer, Martin Fussenegger, Jos Malda, Jos Olijve, Riccardo Levato
Advanced materials, 2025, vol. 37

External positions

Scientific Advisor (see further information below) - none - Readily3D SA