Just around a ten years back, Isabella Castiglioni, professor of used physics at the University of Milano-Bicocca in Italy, hit a wall. She required to translate the benefits of her research into a social benefit, but “could not because I did not have the correct competencies”.
At the time, she was working a research laboratory at Italy’s National Exploration Council, the CNR, centered on health-related imaging. But her aspiration was to acquire her scientific benefits over and above journals and academia, and use them to produce merchandise and products and services to enable medical professionals and patients.
So, in 2010, Castiglioni “returned to faculty, but on the other side of the chair” and enrolled on the executive MBA at Bocconi University in Milan.
The class was the “most demanding knowledge of my life”, she says. That was owing, in portion, to balancing do the job, study and being a mother to two daughters, then aged ten and fifteen. Castiglioni would be in class a few evenings all through the 7 days then get up at 5am at the weekend to total coursework ahead of her loved ones awoke.
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Her to start with lesson from the EMBA was not to converse about it as well much. Whilst the professor required to inform her spouse, small children and pals about the programme, they did not share her excitement. Rather, they wanted to see that “they are the most crucial items to you”, she says, which meant curbing her need to examine the knowledge with them.
A different obstacle was that Castiglioni’s skilled background and knowledge were diverse to the solution taken on the class. “I was a scientist,” she says, including that she had always been supplied time to emphasis entirely on achieving exceptional benefits. There was a “very diverse attitude” and rate on the EMBA, having said that. It was much more about “how to handle problems and chance in a really, really quick way”, she says.
Just one soon after-influence of this intensity hit Castiglioni when the class finished. “During that period [on the EMBA], all the things has a diverse velocity,” she says. But when it finished, much of daily life outside do the job felt “a tiny flat” and “boring”, and she found it hard to emphasis on spare time and holiday seasons when her do the job seemed so exciting. “Fortunately, with a tiny time I found a stability,” she provides.
“I expressed this sensation to my [executive] mentor and she claimed it was really frequent at the commencing when you end, but then soon after one particular or two yrs, all the things variations and gets usual [once again].”
But Castiglioni was previously seeking for an avenue to channel her energy, in the type of “killer applications” to acquire to marketplace. “I started out to do the job with my finest [postgraduate and research] students to locate a remedy that used our techniques in artificial intelligence to health-related imaging,” she says.

Alzheimer’s ailment was her to start with quit. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain has the opportunity to locate early symptoms of Alzheimer’s, she describes, but radiologists have to glance at a lot of impression points and that signifies crunching information. By 2018, Castiglioni’s team had trained and examined an AI system that could analyse MRI scans to detect in just minutes early symptoms of Alzheimer’s and then to supply a prognosis. The system was eighty five per cent accurate, as determined by the stick to-up of patients later on, she says.
The similar yr, together with one particular of her students, Christian Salvatore, Castiglioni co-founded DeepTrace Technologies, a spin-off from the University College for Superior Scientific studies Pavia in Italy. “We teach resources on medical client information and acquire predictive types that are ready to make a prognosis, prognosis and to predict the reaction to treatment method of each personal,” she says.
In January 2020, the corporation secured €1.7m in seed funding from financial commitment fund Development Tech Transfer. Presently, two of DeepTrace’s merchandise carry the European CE well being and security marking: Trace4AD, which applies AI to MRI scans to predict the chance of Alzheimer’s and Trace4OC, which also utilizes AI to analyse ultrasound pictures to predict the chance of ovarian most cancers.
CV
2019-present Professor of used physics, University of Milano-Bicocca
2019-present Honorary president and scientific adviser, DeepTrace Technologies
2019-present Affiliate researcher, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR/National Exploration Council)
1997-2019 Researcher, CNR
DeepTrace has other merchandise in its portfolio, including one particular that senses plastics in oceans remotely utilizing drone pictures and one more that applies AI to infrared or X-ray examination of old artworks. There are a additional ten in the pipeline, in accordance to Castiglioni.
The EMBA presented beneficial lessons on economics, finance, business enterprise options, stability sheets, sustainability and performing cash, she says. “It is the finest MBA because you return house and in the early morning you can apply at do the job what you have learnt all through your class,” she provides.
Further than technological competencies, Castiglioni credits the class with reworking her gentle techniques.
“During the MBA, there were a lot of team things to do and I was judged by my colleagues,” she says. “I realised I was not open to listening to many others, not open to considering their contemplating or results . . . so I committed a lot of time to improving upon my gentle techniques.”
Working with her mentor on the class, Castiglioni shared an anonymous questionnaire with her colleagues, researchers and PhD students to assess her gentle techniques. The to start with benefits were “terrible”, she says. This partly arrives from leading a laboratory, “because when you want to obtain exceptional scientific benefits, you are really rigorous”, which signifies asking a lot from students.
She has given that learnt how to “work in a much more cozy way”, she says, and applies this at DeepTrace, exactly where she is now honorary president and scientific adviser, whilst Salvatore has become main executive.
That does not mean Castiglioni is slowing down. There is a business enterprise strategy in location to scale up DeepTrace in Europe, the US and Asia around the next five yrs, she says. She is saved busy at the corporation alongside her employment as a professor and scientist — a union of roles she says is a excellent healthy. Without a doubt, her information for any person contemplating about learning for an EMBA is to pursue it “with a passionate and determined attitude”.
But even with the “velocity” she skilled on the programme, Castiglioni sounds a be aware of warning about speeding. To make the most of an EMBA, she says, “you have to do it at the correct time in your profession — not as well early”.
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