Martino Franchi

Martino Franchi is an Assistant Professor in Skeletal Muscle Physiology at the Department of Biomedical Sciences of University of Padova (IT).

He graduated with his BSc and MSc in Sports Sciences in Milan, before enrolling as a master student at the Manchester Metropolitan University (UK), where he successfully obtained a Masters by Research degree in skeletal muscle physiology. He then obtained his PhD from the same university under the supervision of Prof Marco Narici with a project investigating human muscle functional, structural, and molecular remodeling to different contraction types.

After a 3 years postdoc position in muscle physiology at the University of Nottingham (UK), he was appointed (with double affiliation) as a Research Fellow in Muscle Plasticity, working on mechano-transduction topic with Prof Martin Flück, and as Research Fellow in the Sports Medicine Research Group at the Balgrist University Hospital (University of Zürich, CH). He was a recipient, as Co-I, of a Swiss grant (Balgrist Foundation) for implementing novel ultrasound techniques for the study of specific lower limb muscles and patellar tendon mechanical properties of the Swiss Ski National Teams and of Swiss Elite Youth Skiers.

His main interests lay in muscle and tendon functional and structural adaptations to loading, disuse, and ageing, with a from-the-macro-to-the-micro approach. He was recently awarded (2021), as a Co-I and unit head, of an Italian Project of National Interest (PRIN) funding for a 3-years project to study the neuromuscular hallmarks of ageing (Trajector-AGE project).

He has published innovative reports on in vivo muscle adaptations to loading and unloading and on muscle ultrasound imaging, and he was a co-author of a recent publication that was able, for the first time in humans, to show sarcomeric adpatations in vivo (Pincheira et al. JSHS 2021). He also is an academic editor of Translational Sports Medicine Journal and an Editorial Board Member of Science & Medicine in Football.