I completed my B.S in Molecular Biology (2010) and his M.Sc. in Neuroscience (2012) at Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, Italy. My neuroscience research started with an Armenise-Harvard Summer Fellowship in the Datta lab at Harvard Medical School, and further blossomed during a master thesis in the Ratto Lab at Scuola Normale. I was then awarded a Wellcome Trust Fellowship to complete my doctoral training University College London (2018). At UCL, working under the mentorship of Matteo Carandini, and in collaboration with Kenneth Harris and the Kullmann lab, I pioneered novel strategies to record the function and connectivity of neurons and deployed them to understand the brain mechanisms of vision and of epilepsy. Finally, to transition to independence, I secured a Sir Henry Wellcome fellowship, sponsored by Michael Hausser, focusing on the mechanisms of visual and motor computations both in the neocortex and in the cerebellum.
In 2023, supported by an Armenise-Harvard Career Development Award and by a Human Technopole Early Career Fellowship, I launched the Functional Architecture of Neural Circuits Laboratory, based at the Italian Institute of Technology - Center for Neuroscience and Cognitive Systems.
Biography
After obtaining my BS in Behavioral Neuroscience at Northeastern University in the United States and working in various labs across the country, I moved to the University of Trento where I earned a MSc in Cognitive Science. Throughout my studies my interest has shifted to systems neuroscience and its power to describe the mechanisms underlying brain states. Now as a CIMeC PhD student in the Rossi Lab at IIT, I aim to uncover the principles by which an organism processes information – both external and internal - to produce the appropriate perception and behavioural output, with a particular emphasis on the intersection between those two types of stimuli.
Biography
I received my Bachelor’s Degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Turin, where I also obtained my Master’s Degree in Biotechnology for Neurosciences. During my master’s thesis research, I applied whole-brain Immediate Early Genes imaging using light-sheet fluorescence microscopy to investigate how the mouse brain distinguishes familiar and unfamiliar olfactory stimuli from conspecifics of the opposite sex. My current research as a PhD student in Cognitive and Brain Sciences focuses on understanding the genetic signatures of circuits representing moving multi-sensory object in cortical sensory and motor areas.
I got my BSc in Neuroscience with Honours from the University of Edinburgh, where I carried out a project on context-specific memory in the rat hippocampus and prefrontal cortex under the supervision of Prof. Richard G. Morris. Subsequently, I received a MSc in Neuroscience at University College London with a thesis on dendritic signals in the mouse cortex, which sparked my interest in neocortical dendrites and their role in cortical computations. Currently, I am a Neuroscience PhD student working across the Neural Computation Lab (UCL), Cortex Lab (UCL), and the Rossi Lab (IIT), to investigate the role of pyramidal dendrites in vivo using Neuropixels probes.
I obtained my masters in neuroscience at UCL, where I studied the place cell’s representation of environmental connectivity in rat's hippocampus. Currently I am a PhD student in Neuroscience, funded by BBSRC London Interdisciplinary Biosciences Consortium and the Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds. I am based in the Carandini-Harris laboratory at University College London, where, in collaboration with the Rossi Lab (IIT) I investigate how the responses of neurons in the primary visual cortex are shaped by the inputs they receive on their apical dendrite. Using two-photon synaptic imaging I characterise the activity of inputs targeting apical dendrites, and then manipulate them with optical micro-dissection. My project will reveal the causal role of apical dendrites in the visual cortex.
I hold both a Bachelor’s in Computer Science and a Master’s in Computational Medicine from Ewha Womans University, where my Master’s thesis focused on analyzing EEG recordings of sleep disorder patients. After that, I gained experience as a research assistant in a Functional Neuroimaging lab with Alessandro Gozzi, focusing on neuromodulation effects on rodent models with fMRI. Now as a research assistant in the Rossi Lab at IIT, I aim to investigate how the structural organization of synaptic inputs on dendrites shapes the tuning of visual cortical neurons, mining connectomics and functional data from the MICrONS project.
I am a master's student of Mathematical Engineering at Politecnico di Milano, specialising in "Computational Science and Computational Learning". My long-held passion for neuroscience has led me to apply to the lab, where I am taking my first steps in bridging my academic background to this field. My research interests broadly lie in computational brain modelling, and in the future I aspire to focus on the mechanisms that shape and bring about human conscious thought.
CNR-Istituto di Neuroscienze
Letizia Mariotti
CNRS-Institute de Neurobiologie de la Mediterranee
Stephane Bugeon
University of Sussex
Sylvia Schroeder
University College London
Pip Coen
Kenneth Harris
Matteo Carandini
Michael Hausser
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