During the sixth reporting period, the project consolidated the communication, dissemination and exploitation activities planned within WP6. The actions were aimed at increasing the visibility of the results, enhancing the value of the scientific outcomes, updating communication content, participating in scientific events and spreading information through dedicated digital tools and materials. This dissemination phase accompanied the final technical validation of the project, connecting material performance, prototype demonstration and future scientific, technological and industrial development perspectives.
A first major step was the presentation of GAiA at the XVIII National AIMAT Conference, held in Ischia Porto from 31 August to 3 September 2025. There, the project was presented through a poster dedicated to the work carried out up to that point. Shortly afterwards, GAiA reached the European biomaterials community at ESB25, the 34th Annual Conference of the European Society for Biomaterials, held in Turin from 7 to 11 September 2025, where an oral presentation illustrated the project’s progress and encouraged exchange with researchers and specialists in the field.
These events marked an important change in the life of the project. GAiA was no longer communicating only objectives and planned activities: it was presenting concrete results, including antimicrobial bioactive glass formulations, electrospun nonwoven fabrics, particle integration strategies and the first evidence supporting their potential use in airway protection systems. The abstract presented in the conference proceedings highlighted that the project had produced nonwoven fabrics from water-soluble polymers, avoiding toxic solvents and reducing the use of polluting agents. It also reported that the porosity of the fabric supported its possible use in airway-protection systems, and that the bioactive glasses were incorporated within the fabric network, supporting their immobilisation.
The most visible international dissemination milestone came with the participation in the 50th International Conference and Expo on Advanced Ceramics and Composites — ICACC 2026, held in Daytona Beach, USA, from 25 to 30 January 2026. In this high-profile international context for the materials-science community, GAiA’s final results were presented through two invited talks. This was a strategic choice: instead of limiting dissemination to a local project event, the team brought the results to a broader, more diverse and highly qualified scientific audience.
The first invited presentation, delivered by Valeria Cannillo, was titled “Exploring the potential of bioactive glasses in hard and soft tissue regeneration.” It placed GAiA’s bioactive-glass research within the wider field of advanced biomaterials, showing how new glass formulations incorporating therapeutic ions can improve biological responses and offer broader processing windows compared with traditional bioactive glass systems.
The second invited presentation, delivered by Francesco Basoli, was titled “Antimicrobial bioactive glass-loaded nonwoven fabrics: Tailoring BGs to the specific application.” This contribution directly addressed the core of GAiA: the development of antimicrobial bioactive glasses and their integration into electrospun nonwoven fabrics for respiratory protection applications. The abstract described zinc- and magnesium-containing bioactive glass formulations, their antimicrobial activity against Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, the use of water-soluble polymers, the avoidance of toxic solvents, the esterification process used to make the electrospun yarn insoluble, and the immobilisation of the bioactive glasses inside the fabric network.
This international dissemination phase helped position GAiA in a scientific space that connects several key research areas: advanced ceramics, biomaterials, antimicrobial materials, sustainable manufacturing and protective filtration. The invited format was particularly significant because it gave the project visibility within sessions dedicated to next-generation bioceramics and biocomposites, allowing the GAiA team to present both the bioactive-glass research line and the composite fibre-filter concept in front of researchers from different disciplines and countries.
The project report underlines that this strategy significantly strengthened the visibility, recognition and scientific positioning of GAiA. Presenting the results in high-profile international settings offered an opportunity for comparison with researchers from different scientific and geographical backgrounds, while associating the project with authoritative scientific venues. The report also notes that the presentations generated questions, observations and positive feedback, confirming the relevance of the topics addressed, the originality of the approach and the application potential of the proposed solutions.
This dissemination activity was supported by the final maturity of the project results. By the end of the sixth reporting period, GAiA had demonstrated the feasibility of electrospun nonwoven fabrics loaded with antimicrobial systems, produced through a sustainable approach, deeply characterised and capable of expressing bacteriostatic properties while maintaining suitable morphology, stability and preliminary user-safety features. These results provided the scientific basis for presenting GAiA not merely as an early-stage idea, but as a validated material concept for future respiratory-protection technologies.
For GAiA, entering the international scientific arena means that the project’s results began to circulate beyond the laboratories of the two research units. The work became part of a wider discussion on how personal protective equipment can be made safer, more functional and more sustainable. The conference presentations showed that GAiA’s approach — combining green electrospinning, antimicrobial bioactive glasses and filter-oriented material design — can contribute to the international debate on next-generation protective materials.
