Meet Stefano Begolo, Ph.D., PMP, and soon to be MBA. Stefano has been a key part of ALine’s management team for more than six years, managing engineering programs throughout the full project cycle while supporting business development. Stefano hires, trains and manages the engineering team to ensure all projects run smoothly, while ensuing engineers carve out time for internal R&D to support patent applications or process improvements. Sometimes he jumps in and solves problems at the bench, helping to forward both company and customer programs. Stefano plays a key role in company strategic planning; developing and delivering on company goals.
Dr. Stefano Begolo – click the image to watch the video interview
Prior to joining ALine, Stefano spent eight years developing microfluidic tools for life sciences and point of care diagnostics as part of academic research programs at the Curie Institute (Paris France) and at CalTech. What motivates him in his work is knowing that what ALine does improves people’s lives in many different ways, whether it’s having a reliable diagnosis at the point of care, improving the research of new therapeutics, providing products for safety by detecting harmful gases or toxins in air or water.
When asked how he would describe the culture at ALine, Stefano responded, “ALiners have a “can-do” attitude and focus on solving problems and challenges using creativity and collaboration. We take pride in our work and make sure the results meet or exceed expectations.” He noted that he likes to hire employees who are always looking for better ways to solve problems, and who enjoy a variety of challenges.
On a day-to-day basis, Stefano’s time is spent interacting with customers and ensuring programmatic goals are translated into clear tasks and milestones to be achieved by the engineering and production staff. When time permits, he is taking what he’s observed and creating new approaches that form the basis of patents or trade secret know-how that keeps ALine at the forefront of the science and technology in microfluidics.
Outside of work, Stefano enjoys a variety of outdoor activities, including hiking with his dogs and playing beach volleyball. Stefano is an avid basketball fan and roots for the Clippers. Stefano is a native of Italy, and enjoys travel. He and his wife love Hawaii, and even named one of their dogs after the island of Maui. As a native Italian, pizza ranks as one of his favorite foods. He knows the best pizza places in LA, and learned to make his own during the pandemic, exploring new ingredients. Now homemade pizza is a new family tradition.
Stefano grew up close to Padua, and has always been fascinated by the figure of Galileo Galilei, one of Padua University’s most famous scientists. Apart from his tremendous scientific contributions to science (he’s known as the father of the scientific method), what struck Stefano about Galileo’s history is how he reacted when forced to retract his claim that the earth rotates around the sun. He said what he was asked to say in order to save his life, but could not force himself not to say “And yet it moves”, underlining how science does not care about opinions.
As a child, Stefano wanted to know how things worked, so he disassembled his toys to see what pieces were in there that made it work. In some cases, it wasn’t easy to put them back together, so he had to solve a puzzle to get all the parts back into place. As a 4 or 5 year old, Stefano dressed as an “inventor” for Carnival (Italian equivalent to a Halloween costume), which he believes was a good indication of his future career interests.
