Health Researcher at the IRCCS Istituto delle Scienze Neurologiche di Bologna, Ospedale Bellaria since 2020, she currently conducts research in the field of functional and molecular neuroimaging. Her research interests focus in particular on identifying structural, functional, and metabolic profiles of brain activity in patients with neurodegenerative diseases. She is currently concentrating her research on molecular and cognitive biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease.
Education
She graduated in Clinical and Community Psychology in 2002 from the Department of Psychology at the Università degli Studi di Torino. In 2008, she obtained a PhD in Neuroscience from the Institute of Human Physiology, Department of Medicine and Surgery, at the Università di Parma.
She carried out postdoctoral research at the laboratories of Prof. V. Gallese (2008) and Prof. G. Rizzolatti (2010–2014) at the Università di Parma. Between 2009 and 2010, she also worked in France with the multidisciplinary team led by Prof. C. Barthélémy in the Department of Child Neuropsychiatry and at INSERM U-939 of the Hôpital Bretonneau in Tours, where she further specialized in Autism Spectrum Disorders.
Teaching Activities
Since 2014, she has continuously held adjunct teaching positions at the Università di Bologna within the Master’s Degree program in Primary Education Sciences, also supervising undergraduate theses and mentoring students throughout the preparation and discussion of their final dissertations.
She currently leads the laboratory on Autism Spectrum Disorders within the course “Psychology of Disability and Inclusion” taught by Prof. Guarini.
Previously, she served as an adjunct lecturer at the Università degli Studi di Bergamo (Social Cognitive Neuroscience course, a.y. 2015–2016) and at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Brescia campus (Child Neuropsychiatry course, a.y. 2011–2013).
Scientific Activity
She has participated in numerous national and international research programs, including two recent national projects funded by the Ministero della Salute:
“Rare Neurodegenerative Diseases: Longitudinal Multi-domains Neuropsychological and Multi-nuclear Advanced MR Imaging Phenotyping of Patients with HSP and ASL” (Current Research 2023–2024);
“Deep Genetic and Phenotypic Characterization of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) Families: Analysis of the Nuclear and Mitochondrial Genome,” Grant for Young Researchers (GR-2013-02357561),
in which she served as Principal Investigator.
She also acts as a referee for international scientific journals in the field of Neuroscience.
