Dr. Francesco Giardini

Research Interests:

• Development of next-generation optical imaging technologies for the structural and functional investigation of cardiac tissue across multiple spatial scales.
• Characterization of disease-induced cardiac remodeling and its role in the mechanisms linking structural alterations, arrhythmogenesis, and sudden cardiac death.
• Data-driven computational modeling for personalized prediction of arrhythmic risk and cardiac electrophysiological behavior.  

Brief CV:

Francesco Giardini received his master's degree in Biomedical Engineering in 2018 from the University of Florence. In 2019, he was awarded a short-term EMBO fellowship to visit Dr Martin Bishop at the Cardiac Electro-Mechanics Research Group (CEMRG), King's College London. In 2022, he obtained his PhD in Molecular Medicine from the University of Siena. From 2023 to 2026, he held a research position at the Institute for Experimental Cardiovascular Medicine (IEKM), Freiburg, Germany. He is now a researcher at the URT OptoCARD of the Institute of Clinical Physiology (CNR), Italy, and continues his collaboration with IEKM, Freiburg, as a guest scientist. His research focuses on 3-D image analysis and computational modelling based on high-resolution whole-heart reconstructions to investigate cardiac tissue remodelling and electrical function. In 2025, he was awarded the DGK Research Fellowship from the German Cardiac Society (DGK) and received funding through the European Rare Diseases Research Alliance (ERDERA) transnational call to join an international consortium working on arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy. In 2026, he was named recipient of the 2027 R Jean Banister Prize Lecture for Early-Career Physiologists, awarded by The Physiological Society.

Selected Publications:

• Giardini F., Olianti C., Marchal G.A., Campos F., Romanelli V., Steyer J., Madl J., Piersanti R., Arecchi G., Perumal Vanaja I., Biasci V., Rog-Zielinska E.A., Nesi G., Loew L.M., Cerbai E., Chelko S.P., Regazzoni F., Loewe A., Bishop M.J., Mongillo M., Kohl P., Zaglia T., Zgierski-Johnston C.M., Sacconi L. Correlative imaging integrates electrophysiology with three-dimensional murine heart reconstruction to reveal electrical coupling between cell types. Nature Cardiovascular Research, doi: 10.1038/s44161-025-00728-9. Online ahead of print. (2025).
• Vermoortele D., Olianti C., Amoni M., Giardini F., De Buck S., Nagaraju C.K., Willems R., Roderick H.L., Sipido K.R., Sacconi L., Claus P. Precision sampling of discrete sites identified during in-vivo functional testing in the mammalian heart. Communication Engineering, 3(1):170. doi:10.1038/s44172-024-00307-z. (2024).
• Pioner J.M., Vitale G., Steczina S., Langione M., Margara F., Santini L., Giardini F., Lazzeri E., Piroddi N.,Scellini B., Palandri C., Schuldt M., Spinelli V., Girolami F., Mazzarotto F., van der Velden J., Cerbai E., Tesi C.,Olivotto I., Bueno-Orovio A., Sacconi L., Coppini R., Ferrantini C., Regnier M., Poggesi C. Slower CalciumHandling Balances Faster Cross-Bridge Cycling in Human MYBPC3 HCM. Circulation Research, 132(5):628-644. doi:10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.122.321956 (2023).
• Olianti C.*, Giardini F.*, Lazzeri E.*, Costantini I., Silvestri L., Coppini R., Cerbai E., Pavone F.S., Sacconi L. Optical clearing in cardiac imaging: A comparative study. Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, 168:10. doi:10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2021.07.012 (2022).
• Giardini, F., Lazzeri, E., Vitale, G., Ferrantini, C., Costantini, I., Pavone, F. S., Poggesi, C., Bocchi, L. and Sacconi, L. Quantification of Myocyte Disarray in Human Cardiac Tissue. Frontiers in Physiology, 12(750364). doi:10.3389/fphys.2021.750364 (2021).