Rachele Catalano
Photonic Engineering
Rachele Catalano is an engineer with a background in Bioengineering and Photonic Engineering at Università di Pavia. During an exchange at Harvard University, through the Armenise Fellowship, she discovered her passion for the intersection of Physics and Biology, with a particular interest in microscopy and optics. During her PhD at B CUBE, Technische Universität Dresden, she studied motor proteins, nanoscale machines that convert chemical energy into motion, transporting cargo within cells. Her goal is to understand them deeply and turn them into tools for new applications, collaborating with Universities of Lund, Saarbrücken, Bologna, Strasbourg, and Oxford. Beyond the lab, she has supervised university students, collaborated on projects in German high schools to explain molecular machines, and contributed to organizing the Long Night of Science in Dresden to promote science to the public. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, photography, and scuba diving.
University: Harvard University, Università di Pavia, Universita Technologica di Dresda