Amaia Cipitria is an Ikerbasque Research Professor with a background in Bioengineering and Materials Science. She got her Ph.D. in Materials Science and Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge, UK, in 2008. She was a postdoctoral researcher at Queensland University of Technology, Australia, and at the Charité University Hospital Berlin, Germany. As principal investigator at the Charité, she investigated the effect of biomaterial physical properties on cell response and in vivo bone regeneration, using advanced materials characterization techniques. In 2017, she received an Emmy Noether Independent Research Group Leader grant by the German Research Foundation, and moved to the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces (MPI-CI) as leader of the independent research group “Extracellular Matrix in Disease and Regeneration”. In 2021, she returned to Spain as an Ikerbasque Research Associate at Biodonostia Health Research Institute to start the new research group „Bioengineering in Regeneration and Cancer“. Her current research aims to understand how biophysical and biochemical properties of native extracellular matrix and synthetic biomaterials guide cell response in tissue regeneration, cancer dormancy and bone metastasis. As a former gender equality officer at the MPI-CI, she is committed to promoting women in science. She also serves as associate editor of the journal „Biomaterials Advances“. In 2023, she was awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant (DORMATRIX, 101123883) starting in autumn 2024. Originally from San Sebastián located on the Atlantic coast, she loves traveling with her family in a van to the mountains and seaside.
