Antonino Mario Cassarà

Antonino Mario Cassarà was born in Partinico, Italy, in February 1980. He earned a bachelor's degree in physics from the Universita’ degli Studi di Catania, Italy in 2004, defending a thesis on nuclear physics and phase transitions of nuclear matter to quark matter in heavy ion collisions and in neutron stars.

Antonino defended his PhD dissertation in physics at the Universitá di Roma ‘La Sapienza’ in 2008 on the feasibility of direct detection of neuronal currents in the brain by means of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). He conducted research on neuronal current imaging (NCI) by MRI techniques at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA, as visiting scientist, and as a post-doctoral fellow at the ‘Centro Studi e Ricerche E. Fermi’ in Rome and at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) in Berlin.

Antonino joined the IT'IS Foundation in May 2014 as a post-doctoral fellow to work on projects and services related to non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS), functional neurostimulation in the context of bioelectronics medicine, electroceuticals, and safety aspects of unintended stimulation. Since June 2017, Antonino has been the IT'IS project leader for neurostimulation and application head for neurostimulation applications.

His main research activities involve:

• modelling of the neuroelectric response of the brain to non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) techniques, e.g., transcranial electrical stimulation (TES), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), deep brain stimulation (DBS), as well as NIBS via temporally interfering (TI) fields
• development of neuro-functionalized head models and of procedures for optimization of electrode placement, patient personalization, investigations of mechanisms of neurostimulation at the level of a single neuron to neuronal populations
• investigations of functional neurostimulation – e.g., vagus nerve stimulation – by electroceuticals and neuroprosthetic devices, device development, and optimization for targeted and selective peripheral nerve stimulation (PNS)
• safety investigations related to mechanisms and contexts of unwanted stimulation by low-frequency electromagnetic fields in controlled – e.g., during MRI exposure – or uncontrolled exposures – e.g., exposure to wireless power transfer technologies (WPT), as well as the safety of medical implants during radiofrequency exposure (ISO-TS10974)
• development and characterization of neuroelectric models of extended brain sources – based on electrophysiological models of neurons – for investigations of applied bioelectromagnetism, neuronal source imaging (NCI), and remote sensing
• implementation, verification, and validation of electrophysiological models of nerve fibers and nerve models

Antonino serves as a scientific reviewer for a number of peer-review scientific journals – including Neuroimage, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Medical & Biological Engineering & Computing, Journal of Neuroscience Methods, etc. – as well as for conferences and funding agencies.