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About

Valentina Di Santo is a pioneering researcher at the intersection of biomechanics, bioinspired robotics, and evolutionary biology. Her work fundamentally reimagines how we study aquatic locomotion, using cutting-edge robotic platforms to decode the swimming secrets of fishes. Di Santo’s most celebrated contribution is the creation of a tissue-engineered soft-robotic ray—a biohybrid system that swims and phototactically follows light cues, inspired by the simple morphology of batoid fish (713 citations). This landmark achievement demonstrated how living cardiac cells can be integrated with synthetic materials to create functional, guided swimmers. She also led the development of the Tunabot, a high-frequency experimental platform that quantifies swimming performance and flow fields, enabling direct comparisons with live tuna and mackerel (346 citations). Her research has systematically explored undulatory swimming kinematics across diverse fish species, revealing convergent patterns in body movements (128 citations) and investigating linear acceleration using biorobotic models with soft fluidic actuators (71 citations). Most recently, Di Santo has pioneered paleoinspired robotics, using robotic models as experimental tools to test hypotheses about the locomotion of extinct species, bridging deep time with modern engineering. Her work has profound implications for designing more agile underwater robots and understanding the evolutionary constraints on fish locomotion.