PAULINA NÚÑEZ BERNAL AWARDED NWO VENI GRANT

17-07-2026

We are proud to share that Paulina Núñez Bernal has been awarded a prestigious Veni grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) for her project on 3D-printed liver models.

The Veni grant supports outstanding early-career researchers with bold and innovative ideas. The €320,000 award will enable Paulina to further develop her research at the Regenerative Medicine Center Utrecht (RMCU), where she works together with Riccardo Levato.

Paulina’s project, BiLIVR: Developmentally Instructive Biofabrication to Program Multicellular Transport Pathways in the Human Liver, aims to create human liver models that better mimic human biology. Before a new medicine reaches patients, researchers need to understand how it affects the human body. However, current laboratory models cannot always capture the full complexity of human organs, making it difficult to predict whether a medicine will be safe and effective.

In her project, Paulina will use advanced 3D bioprinting to build human liver tissue models. Rather than only printing cells into a predefined shape, she will introduce biological instructions into printed biomaterials, helping guide how cells grow, interact, and organize.

The long-term aim is to create more human-relevant models that help researchers better understand how medicines affect the liver, improve drug safety testing, and reduce reliance on animal experiments.

Congratulations, Paulina, on this well-deserved achievement!