Air-source heat pumps coupled with photovoltaic systems are going to be a more and more promising technology, as its widespread application in residential houses will help achieving the decarbonisation of the building sector, which is strongly promoted by the European Union. The aspects that inspire confidence for this solution are that: i) the average quality of heat pumps has recently improved; ii) new and renovated buildings, with well insulated envelopes, are more suitable for low-temperature heating systems; iii) photovoltaic modules price is significantly decreased and still shows a diminishing trend; iv) the share of the electricity production from renewable sources is progressively increasing, making the use of electricity more ecologically favourable and v) heat pump and photovoltaic systems can make the residential sector flexible and ready to face the changes in the electricity system. The aim of this thesis is to analyse the manifold relationships between the building, the HVAC system and the boundary conditions, as well as the interaction of this system with the electricity grid. The work is almost entirely based on the dynamic simulation, which is performed by using more or less detailed models, depending on the objective of the single study. The heat pump is a crucial element, since its behaviour is influenced by many factors. Therefore, particular attention is pointed toward the modelling of this component and its control. The general approach mainly adopted is the comparison between a reference system, defined case by case, and other similar scenarios in which one or more variations are introduced. Since different aspects are investigated, the variations can concern either the system component (building and HVAC system), the boundary conditions or the control strategy. In particular, one of the studies provide an extensive analysis on how the climate impacts the behaviour of the system, involving nine European cities in a wide range of latitude. The role of the thermal storage (water tank and building thermal mass) is also studied, showing that its potential is exploited only when it is properly controlled. The last part of the thesis focuses on the system control, which influences the system performance more than expected. Despite this, the benefits of applying the proposed smart control strategies are not as great as those deriving from the addition of the electrical storage, in a system in which only the thermal storage is present. Even better results can be obtained by applying control strategies that also manage the battery charging/discharging. A general conclusion is that rule-based control strategies would be cheap and e↵ective; however, they require a tailored implementation and their development for the mass-market is not easy.

The term “theranostics” defines the effort to develop individualized therapies by the combination of diagnostic and therapeutic functions in the same agent. Gold-magnetite hybrid nanoparticles (H-NPs) are proposed as innovative theranostic nanotools for imaging-guided radiosensitization of cancers. H-NPs are designed to exert a dual function: (i) to provide contrast enhancement in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).and (ii) to enhance radiation effects in the cancer. The imaging and the radiosensitization potentialities of H-NPs arise from the superparamagnetic behaviour of magnetite and the large x-ray extinction coefficient of gold, respectively. Hybrid nanoparticles allows cancer theranostics as the biodistibution of nanoparticles can be tracked by MR imaging, providing a real-time picture of the cancer radiosensitivity profile and allowing precise modulation of radiotherapy. The purposes of this work are to synthetize properly designed gold-magnetite hybrid nanoparticles and to provide preliminary in vitro evaluations about the potentialities of nanoparticles as MRI-contrast agents and radiosensitizers. A novel method for the synthesis of hydrophilic and superparamagnetic Tween20-stabilized dumbbell-like gold-magnetite hybrid nanoparticles was set up. Morphology and chemical composition of nanoparticles were assessed by transmission electron microscopy, x-ray diffraction analysis and ion-coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy. Colloidal stability and magnetic properties of nanoparticles were determined by dynamic light scattering and alternating field magnetometer. The potentialities of H-NPs for MR imaging were studied using a human 4T-MRI scanner. Nanoparticles were proven to induce concentration-dependent contrast enhancement in T2*-weighted MR-images. The biosafety, the cellular uptake and the radiosensitization activity of H-NPs were investigated in human osteosarcoma MG63 cell cultures and murine 3T3 fibroblasts, using specific bioassays and laser scanning confocal microscopy. The results evidenced that nanoparticles were taken up by cells without inducing any cytotoxic effects, even at high nanoparticle concentration. In addition, nanoparticles were proven to induce osteosarcoma-specific reduction of cell viability in clonogenic cell cultures treated with radiotherapy. The experimental results confirmed the potentialities of H-NPs as theranostic tools for MRI-guided radiosensitization. Further studies are needed to confirm our findings and to identify other potential biological targets for MRI-guided radiosensitization.

The technologies for the use of biomass as an energy source are not always environmental friendly process: wood combustion, for example, can be a rather a dirty process that causes the release in air of several dangerous compounds. For those reasons it is important to develop approaches aimed at the use of biomass in a cleanest way, avoiding, whenever possible, direct combustion of solid biomass and, rather, pursuing fuel upgrade processes allowing a better combustion or direct conversion to electricity through fuel cells. The products originating from the gasification process mainly comprise a mixture of the permanent gases CO, CO2, H2 and CH4, steam, char, tars and ash. The raw synthesis gas needs to be cleaned from tars before it may be upgraded to other commodities. In most cases if tars deposit on the catalyst surface it will block the active sites i.e., carbon acts as catalyst poison. Furthermore, tars in the raw gas can also cause corrosion and blockage of pipes in downstream process equipment. One of the main challenges in biomass gasification is the minimization of tar content in the product gas in combination with optimization of the gas composition. That is, to reduce the tar content as much as possible and to increase the permanent gases. In this context, it is especially interesting the development of technologies for syngas production (i.e. synthesis gas) through biomass gasification and for syngas utilization in fuel cells system, in order to produce energy from renewable resources. In detail the SOFCs (Solid Oxide Fuel Cell) work at high temperatures, and can be fed with different type of fuels, such as methane, carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Thus, the syngas produced by means of biomass gasification, seems to be a suitable fuel for this kind of cells. This chance is particularly interesting, considering that small and medium size conversion plant technologies could be integrated in a distributed energy generation model that is expected to increase its diffusion. The aim of the present project is to verify the possibility of coupling a biomass gasifier with a SOFC for energy production. The use of steam as gasifying agent increases the syngas heating value in comparison with the use of air, since its nitrogen content cause a dilution of the obtained gaseous fuel. Moreover, another beneficial effect in using water steam, is the increase of the H2 percentage up to 50 % in volume. A high hydrogen concentration is kindly recommended if the final aim is to feed a fuel cell. However, the disadvantages of the steam gasification are the lower steam reactivity, comparing with the oxygen one, and the decreasing of the temperature inside the reactor due to the endothermicity of the main reactions. Thus, it is necessary to supply indirectly the heat of reaction. In fluidized bed gasifiers, the bed material acts as solid heat carriers and often provides the heat from char combustion; however fixed bed gasifier are more suitable for small scale application, especially when biomass is used as feedstock . In the first part of this project a small scale (semi continuous, fixed-bed) gasifier has been designed and built. The syngas composition produced has been analyzed and the hydrogen concentration was approximately 60%. In a second stage the plant has been modified in a continuous fixed-bed gasifier, to perform long test duration. The gas composition slightly changes, even if anyway exploitable in fuel cell. Between the gasifier and the fuel cell, a gas cleaning stage has been foreseen. A catalyst is needed for tar cracking. A series of air-gasification tests have been run in a fluidized bed gasifier to test two different catalysts: dolomite and iron. The results on tar concentrations have confirmed the higher efficiency of dolomite in tar cracking. Then, a catalytic filter filled with dolomite has been placed after the fixed bed gasifier for tar abatement. Finally, some tests coupling the gasifier with a solid oxide fuel cells stack have been run. The temperature field measured during the experimental activity by some K-thermocouples has been elaborated to estimate an apparent thermal conductivity coefficient to be used in a 2D model for heat transfer simulation; moreover the data on the syngas composition have been used to test the reliability of a thermo chemical equilibrium model previously developed. The agreement between the output of the equilibrium model and the experimental data is not satisfying. The main problems are the prediction of the residual solid carbon phase and the methane estimation. It is known that the methane prediction it is a difficult task, because it is mainly formed by tars cracking, and thus it is not an equilibrium compound. Several authors have already faced the problem of methane estimation modifying the model with different approaches. In this work, the experimental data have been used to tune up the model, considering the residual solid carbon formed by means of the definition of a parameter called “carbon conversion efficiency†. The accuracy between the thermodynamic equilibrium model and the experimental values significantly improves if the percentage of solid phase is considered. A second modification has been introduced to take into account the moles of carbon and hydrogen which contribute to the methane formation. A better agreement between the experimental results and the output of the modified model has been observed. The experimental campaign shows that steam gasification represents an interesting pathway for the biomass utilization, because it leads to a high quality effluent gas, suitable for feeding solid oxide fuel cells. The proposed modified equilibrium model seems to be a useful engineering tool, as the syngas composition measured is not so far from the thermodynamic predictions.

The goal of this thesis is twofold. First, for a rather broad class of financial options a stochastic model predictive control (SMPC) approach is proposed for dynamically hedging a portfolio of underlying assets.After formulating the dynamic hedging problem as a stochastic control problem with a least-squares criterion, for plain vanilla and exotic options we test its ability to replicate the payoff at expiration date. We show not only that relatively small hedging errors are obtained in spite of price realizations, but also that the approach is robust with respect to market modeling errors. The SMPC approach is then extended to hedging derivative contracts (such as plain vanilla and exotic options) in the presence of transaction costs. After proving that the least-squares approach is no longer suitable to handle this kind of market, the hedging performance obtained by three different measures is tested and compared in simulation on a European call and a barrier option. The aim in the second part of this thesis is to present a novel market design for trading energy and regulating reserves and to introduce a strategy for the optimal bidding problem in such a scenario. In the deregulated market, the presence of several market participants or Balance Responsible Parties (BRPs) entitled for trading energy, together with the increasing integration of renewable sources and price-elastic loads, shift the focus on decentralized control and reliable forecast techniques. The main feature of the considered market design is its double-sided nature. In addition to portfolio-based supply bids and based on prediction of their stochastic production and load, BRPs are allowed to submit risk-limiting requests. Requesting capacity from the AS market corresponds to giving to the market an estimate of the possible deviation from the daily production schedule resulting from the day-ahead auction and from bilateral contracts, named E-Program. In this way each BRP is responsible for the balanced and safe operation of the electric grid. On the other hand, at each Program Time Unit (PTU) BRPs must also offer their available capacity under the form of bids. In this paper, a bidding strategy to the double-sided market is described, where the risk is minimized and all the constraints are fulfilled. The algorithms devised are tested in a simulation environment and compared to the current practice, where the double-sided auction is not contemplated. Results in terms of expected imbalances and reliability are presented.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the most common cause of death in the United States of America, accounting for 24% of all deaths each year,(Anderson et al., 2003) and is projected to rise above 20% globally by 2030.(Mathers and Loncar, 2006) Options for CVD treatment do exist, but are limited by availability of healthy replant tissue from the patient or long term effectiveness and failure rates of both autologous tissue grafts and artificial implants. Grafting failure may often be attributed to the poor mimicry of the site-specific, healthy arterial tissue. While much TEVG research focuses on endothelialization of the graft lumen through chemical signaling, mechanotransduction plays a large role in forming and maintaining a healthy endothelial cell (EC) monolayer. Arteries and grafts interact with hemodynamics to determine flow pulsatility and create healthy, or pathological, mechanical signaling environments. Though arterial tissue is known to be viscoelastic,(Armentano et al., 2006; Bergel, 1961; Bia et al., 2006) the importance of this in developing healthy blood flow is undetermined. Therefore, a gap in the knowledge occurs in the importance of arterial mechanics affecting graft outcomes. To address this we attempt to examine specific shortcomings: 1) Determine whether pathological flow is capable of maintaining EC monolayer in a low arterial compliance model, 2) Establish methods of catering protein hydrogel frequency-dependent properties towards establishing biodegradable materials intended for TEVG, 3) Determine benefits of viscous wall damping in improving hemodynamics towards improved cell response. This proposal centers on improving cell response to pathological hemodynamics through catered viscoelastic material response at the arterial wall. To address this, we hypothesize that maintaining healthy EC monolayer is predicated on hemodynamic mechanotransduction, which results from both graft compliance and viscous damping of the material. To validate this hypothesis, we examine healthy and pathological hemodynamic effects on EC monoculture, and systematically determine the role of viscoelastic material response in maintaining healthy hemodynamics.

The increasing number of lipophilic drug candidates in development in the pharmaceutical industry calls for advanced drug delivery systems with increased bioavailability less day-to-day and food-intake-dependent. Many of these drug candidates possess poor water solubility, so that their dissolution rate in the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) limits their absorption following oral administration. In the past few decades, various lipid-based formulations have been investigated to enhance the bioavailability of such challenging drug candidates and to increase their clinical efficacy when administered orally. Recently, self-emulsifying drug delivery systems (SEDDS) have attracted increasing interests and, in particular, self-nanoemulsifying drug delivery systems (SNEDDS). SEDDS and SNEDDS consist in micro- or nano-emulsions of oil containing the drug that spontaneously form in aqueous media on mild agitation. Usually, they use high amounts of surfactant that may cause degradation and instability of the drugs, being moreover toxic for the gastrointestinal tract. The aim of the present thesis was the preparation of novel self-nanoemulsifying drug delivery systems to overcome the shortages of conventional SEDDS or SNEDDS. To reduce the amount of surfactant, we formulated first a self-nanoemulsifying drug delivery system containing high proportion of essential lemon oil, that was characterized in terms of drug solubility, formulation stability, viscosity, emulsion droplet size, ζ-potential and in vitro drug release. Then, a pH-sensitive SNEDDS was developed that emulsify only at basic pHs. The goal was to protect the lipophilic drugs from the harsh acidic environment in stomach and render it available in the enteric tract where the bioactive compound should be absorbed.

Tissue engineering is an interdisciplinary field aimed to design and engineer an efficient system for tissue and organ regeneration, for instance, for bone healing, based on the combined use of scaffolds, cells, bioactive or signalling molecules. An optimal tissue engineering procedure requires materials and scaffolds fulfilling several requirements, one of those being the ability to trigger and control the crosstalk with the biological environment both in vitro and in vivo, and to induce and control the extracellular matrix production and assembling. Diatomite is one of the most abundant natural sources of hydrated amorphous silica resulting from the accumulation of diatom skeletons. Diatoms possess particular features in structure, morphology as well as composition. Interestingly, it has been recognized that the formation process of diatom skeleton is possibly related to that of human bone. In this study, we wanted to utilize diatoms as silicon donor additives in scaffolds for bone tissue engineering, having been demonstrated the important role of silicon in bone formation. In this first part of the project, we used several methods to eliminate impurities in the raw diatomite. Diatom microparticles (DMPs) and nanoparticles (DNPs) were successfully produced by fragmentation of purified diatoms under alkaline condition. Our result showed that both DMPs and DNPs were able to release silicon, as detected in-vitro by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP/OES). In addition, diatom microparticles and nanoparticles - derived from diatom skeletons - showed minimal or non-cytotoxic effects in-vitro as determined by lactate dehydrogenase assays on cell cultures. These findings suggest that diatom particles derived from diatom skeleton as a silicon donor might have potential use for bone tissue engineering. In the second part of this thesis, we studied the effect of diatom particles on some properties of silk fibroin/diatom particles scaffolds. To handle this task, a series of fibroin scaffolds loaded with different amounts and size of diatom particles (microparticles, nanoparticles and their combination) were fabricated by using the salt leaching method. Diatom particles addition influenced scaffold morphology and mechanical properties, and its biological behaviour as assessed on human osteosarcoma cell line MG63 cultures. Scaffolds loaded with diatom particles strongly enhanced cell adhesion, metabolic activity and proliferation. Moreover, the possible beneficial effect of the addition of diatoms particles to silk fibroin on early bone formation was determined through collagen type I synthesis evaluation, osterix expression and alkaline phosphatase induction. Cultures with human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) demonstrated the silk/diatom particles scaffolds were able to induce the differentiation of progenitor cells. In conclusion, our findings provided strong evidence for a potential use of diatom particles- derived from natural diatom skeleton in biological applications, in particular for bone tissue regeneration.

In Europe about one third of total annual energy consumption is used in both residential and commercial buildings. In many countries already a building regulation exists to ensure the reduction of energy needs for DHW and space heating. Hence, the interest in reducing summer energy demand has grown in the last few years. The summer behavior of buildings is mostly non-stationary and, therefore, the reliability of simple quasi steady state model predictions can not be taken for granted. Since detailed hourly energy simulations emulate the dynamic interaction between environment, building structure, occupants and indoor conditions, they have the potential to provide relevant information about the building summer behavior and to indicate the possible conservation measures for the reduction of energy consumptions. However, one of the limits for the application of enhanced simulation methods, that sometimes can undermine the reliability of their results, is the difficulty to gather reliable input data. Moreover, if dynamic simulation are used in order to compare different choices, decisions are often suboptimal because of the insufficient knowledge of data that has a large consequence on results. Consequently, in order to broaden the use of building simulation in the design process, it is essentially to clarify some aspects. For instance, one of the biggest objection versus the use of detailed procedure is: "to what extent these methods are meaningful if input data are not reliable?" For this reason, the emphasis of this thesis is on the uncertainties of model predictions. In particular, the research is divided in two parts: the investigation of climate issues and the uncertainty analysis of heat transfer estimation, especially for massive wall. The purpose of the research is to support AE in the choice of the characteristics to which the model predictions are more sensitive. In fact, the results of sensitivity and uncertainty analyzes allow to know the robustness of simulation models and make AE aware if the wrong specifications can lead to uncertain results.

The focus of my Ph.D. project is the investigation of the analogies between the dynamics of oil production, the economy and the physical laws that are related to every natural process. The difficulty to retrieve data on the oil market has suggested me that there is a correspondence in Science Communication: indeed, while in the magazines we find many articles that talk about climate change, for instance, we seldom met articles on related topics with keywords such as "energy resources" or "energy depletion". I started to investigate the relationship between the phase-plot of worldwide oil production (1965-2014) and its price. My idea was that the laws regulating the convective intensity and the oil production on one side, and the energy flow in human society on the other, were similar. In particular, this analogy could be true for the change from a slow diffusion process to a faster convective movement. In a first approximation, I tried to describe the phase-plot system in a theoretical way: I imagined the system without perturbations with a worldwide average EROI that varies from 60 (1965) to 15 (2014). Similarly, I picked up the value of world production in 1965 (1,567 Million ton/years) and the same value in 2014 (4,220 Million ton/years) and I assumed a constant increment of the production. Obviously, the phase-plot de-scribes the evolution of the real system and appropriately shows two evident "loops" in correspondence of the two major oil crises in recent times (in the '70s of the last century and in the '10s of the current century), although it is also apparent a "background" (or floor) price the system has never overcome. Following the idea of a possible description of the global oil market trend as a dynamical system, I investi-gated the eventual analogies between oil market and a classical dynamical system which is well known to exhibit an almost doubly cyclic behavior, i.e., the Lorentz attractor. However, this suggestion remained nothing better than that, because the major criticism is that it is rather difficult to conceive that only two loops in a phase-plot could be assimilated tout court to a Lorenz attractor: the investigated period 1965-2014 is in fact too short to validate such an analogy. Therefore, the output of the research was an article deposited it in the arXiv online repository . The relationship between natural phenomena and price-production dynamics of oil extraction, however, could be seen from another point of view. Indeed, the phase-plot, behind the "random walk" initially de-scribed as a Lorenz attractor, suggested us two peaks in correspondence with the upper part of those loops. This "swinging" (macro)behavior is rather similar to that of the theoretical model where we only have two stocks of oil and two prices for them: the first delimited by a price of 100 $/barrel, for a production that re-mains between 0 and 1,000 barrels/day; the second with a cost of 200 $ for a production in the range 1,000-1,500 barrels/day. In this ideal case, following the consumption, we expect the same swinging behavior: if the consumption is in the range between 0 and 1,000 barrels/day, the oil at the lower price will be only used, with a price (ideally) of 100 $/barrel. Since consumption generally grows, the economic system reach-es a point in which it needs to use the second stock of oil at the higher price. As the oil is a global commodi-ty, the price of all oil is determined by the marginal oil barrel, that is to say by the most expensive one (200$). In this ideal dynamics, the price suddenly jumps to the higher level instead of slowly shifting up. If the oil price increases, however, the consumption decreases and, sooner or later, the society comes back to the previous range of extraction intensity. The main characteristic of the simple oil-price dynamics here de-scribed is that there are two rapid movements on the cycle (rise and descent of the price) and two slow movements (consumption that goes up and down, to adapt to the oil price). At this level could be useful in terms of EROI instead of oil stocks (with high and low prices). Therefore, natural variables seem to be more similar to medium price and medium EROI (fast the former, slow the latter). The Lotka-Volterra equations describe the prey-predator ecological mechanisms and many cases are well known and well-studied. One of them seems to have the same features of the simple oil market behavior just described. More specifically, the analogy is between a prey, the American spruce, and a predator, the caterpillars of the species Choristoneura fumiferana that feed on the spruce. The caterpillar population is regarded as the fast variable, since there are periodically observed demographic outbreaks of this species, considered a real scourge , whereas the spruce leaf whole surface is assumed to be the slow variable be-cause the regeneration of the leaves - and not only - is a process that lasts several decades. This dynamic model requires a good evaluation of the worldwide EROI for the oil. This is, in any case, fun-damental as an index of the energy quality used by the society. This is the reason why the EROI is crucial to determine the goodness of an energy resource in general and particularly for oil and gas, that nowadays sat-isfy about 57% of primary energy demand . This dimensionless index is generally defined as the ratio between the energy extracted from a given re-source and the energy costs sustained to get that energy. In a following step of my research, I tried to set up an alternative method for the calculation of the EROI of oil companies. The difficulties to retrieve the data by the oil companies is notorious, thus the strategy consisted in using as a proxy of the energy costs, i.e. the available data about the CO2 emissions of the same oil companies, as reported in their own sustainability reports (SRs). International organizations such as IPCC and WBCSD recommend to the involved companies to compile these reports, but they are not mandatory. The second step was to use, as a proxy of the energy ex-tracted, the CO2 emissions estimate obtained by a stoichiometric conversion of the oil production declared by the oil companies. The resulting estimates of EROI are rather homogeneous and not too different from the values reported in the literature. The method could be suitable for year-by-year comparison of the time evolution of this im-portant energy quality parameter for the individual energy-producing and energy-delivering companies . I defined this parameter as the "corporate's EROI". In particular, this last work had its main difficulty in finding data to make comparisons between the different oil companies. As mentioned above, this is also reflected in the communication sector. If we look at the fol-lowing diagram, we can discover, for example, the differences between related argument ("climate change") and keywords like "energy resource" or "energy depletion". The graph includes all the terms worldwide for the last year (October 1st, 2017 - October 1st, 2018) . I am personally committed to filling the gap (thanks to my previous background in Science Communication), to sensitize the citizenship to the energy transition problem and last year, at the Bright event (European Researchers’ Night) I have developed a game about the Hubbert oil peak to play with people and explain to them the dynamics of peak and resource depletion.

In this dissertation, a report of my PhD research activity is provided. The activity was carried out in Biotech Research Center, part of the Industrial Engineering Department, of the University of Trento (Italy), under the supervision of Prof. Claudio Migliaresi and Dr. Devid Maniglio. Biofabrication, an approach to the bottom-up paradigm of tissue engineering, represents the research topic. This technology is defined as the production of complex biological constructs using cells, components of the ECM, biomolecules, and biomaterials that are assembled with different techniques in an engineered tissue fragment. The general aim of the work was to address some of the problems that currently limited the development and applicability of biofabrication. In particular, two issues were considered in the experimental part: the cryopreservation of cell-laden hydrogel constructs and the development of novel building blocks containing cells using alginate-based hydrogels. Alginate was the material of choice for investigation, as an accepted support for different tissue engineering applications that can sustain several modification and fabrication methods. In the first chapter, the concepts of bottom-up tissue engineering and biofabrication are introduced. The role and state of the art of hydrogels to manufacture cell-laden building blocks, the techniques for cell encapsulation and the commonly used fabrication strategies for biofabrication and bioprinting are reviewed together with their applications. Moreover, the limitations that currently restrict the applicability of hydrogel-based tissue engineering are discussed. In chapter two, the role of alginate hydrogels in tissue engineering and biofabrication is described. In particular, its chemical content, crosslinking behavior, manufacturing capacity, and applications are reviewed with emphasis on the possible modification of alginate hydrogels in order to enhance biocompatibility and functionality of encapsulated cells. The experimental part is described in the following chapters. Chapter three introduces the concept of cryopreservation and in particular the issues concerning the preservation of cell-laden building blocks. Subsequently, the impact of cryopreservation on the viability and functionality of cells encapsulated in alginate matrices is evaluated comparing different cryoprotective agents. The experimental methods for manufacturing and preserving cell-laden alginate fibers and for performing the biological and structural tests are reported. The results are presented, discussed and compared with the state of the art. In chapter four, a novel method for encapsulating cells within alginate-based hydrogel films with micrometer thickness is described. The procedure for immobilizing cells within hydrogel films with different composition is described, together with the performed biological assays aimed at selecting the best matrix composition. The results are reported and discussed, emphasizing the potential applications and future developments of the proposed method.