Biography

Since 2023, I am a research and teaching Ambizione fellow, awarded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), at the Translational Machine Learning Laboratory; jointly affiliated with the Department of Medical Radiology at the Lausanne University Hospital and the Faculty of Biology and Medicine at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.

My academic journey is rooted in developmental cognitive neuroscience, with a dedicated focus on unravelling markers of cognitive development and implementing interventions to foster optimal cognitive growth. My research methodology combines cognitive, structural and functional neuroimaging as well as genetic measures encompassing both typically developing and atypical children and adolescents. My main current project aims to understanding cognitive functioning and neurodevelopmental disorders through an innovative, developmental, transdiagnostic, and multimodal approach, with particular emphasis on the architecture of the corpus callosum.

I completed a joint PhD (2013-2017) in the area of developmental cognitive neurosciences between the University of Melbourne, Australia, and the University of Geneva under the supervison of Prof. Vicki Anderson (UoMelb), Dr Megan Spencer-Smith (UoMelb), Prof. Patrik Vuilleumier (UniGE), Prof. Pierre Barrouillet (UniGE). In the context of my PhD, I have been awarded the Doc.CH fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation. My thesis investigated the effect of agenesis of the corpus callosum (a common brain malformation) on cognitive and brain functions in children and adolescents. I used behavioural measures combined with structural and functional neuroimaging measures to examine brain plasticity and compensation mechanisms.
In 2017, I joined the Medical Image Processing lab (MIPlab, UniGE, Prof. Dimitri Van De Ville) and the Child Development Lab (ChilDlab, UniGE, Prof. Petra Hüppi) as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow.
In 2019, I became a Lecturer at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Geneva. Broadly, my postdoctoral research examines the impact of atypical development on cognition and brain development and how interventions can support optimal development and brain plasticity.