Graduated in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technology at the University of Palermo, he completed his studies, first with a second level master’s degree in Mass Spectrometry and later with a doctorate in Molecular and Biomolecular Sciences. During his doctorate he attended the University of Vienna, under the supervision of Prof. Thierry Langer, where he carried out most of the studies aimed at the development of dynamic pharmacophores to be used in virtual molecular screening processes.

During his career, he has been involved in national and multinational companies (Securproject / Qwince, Luxottica) in the field of project management and quality management applied to process improvement, specializing in 6 sigma and lean principles with a course in general management and a 6 sigma green belt specialization obtained from the Galgano group. In 2016 he was selected by the Ri.MED Foundation and included in the Drug Design team. Since 2018, he has been the reference resource of the Molecular Informatics group.

Ugo is mainly specialized in the use of techniques based on Molecular Mechanics that simulate drug-receptor interaction for the discovery of new biologically active molecules in various diseases and on the use of chemoinformatics tools for ligand-based approaches. In recent years, he has extended his knowledge, thanks to collaborations with other national research groups, implementing in his group the use of techniques based on artificial intelligence in the prediction of biological and chemical-physical properties of the molecules under study. The main focus of Ugo’s research in Ri.MED is related to the design of small molecules with inhibitory activity on the NLRP3 protein involved in inflammatory processes and in the study of protein-protein interactions.

To date Ugo is the author of 36 publications in peer-reviewed international journals and 2 book chapters (Rational Drug Design published and Lecture Notes in Computer Science by Springer).