Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia

Silvia Zanchi is a Ph.D. student at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa. She graduated with honors in Body and Mind Sciences at the University of Turin (Turin, Italy). She is enrolled in the register of psychologists in 2021, after one year of research traineeship under the supervision of Dr. Andrea Cavallo at the Italian Institute of Technology. The Ph.D. project focused on the study of locomotion and mobility mechanisms and processes in multisensory contexts, paying particular attention to the role of the vestibular system. In addition, she spent five months at the Birkbeck University of London (UK) under the supervision of Dr. Ferrè. Currently, she is working on the MySpace project led by Dr. Gori.

Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia

Carolina Tammurello received her master’s degree in Cognitive Neuroscience and Clinical Neuropsychology from University of Padova, in 2020; she graduated cum laude with a dissertation on lesion-symptom mapping models, under the supervision of Prof. Thiebaut de Schotten and Prof. Vallesi. After a postgraduate professional training at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) under the supervision of Dr. Amadeo, she won a Ph.D. fellowship in Bioengineering and Robotics at the University of Genoa, affiliated with the IIT; she is currently working on the MySpace project in the Unit for Visually Impaired People (U-VIP), led by Dr. Gori.

Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia

Stefania Petri obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Neuro Therapy and Psychomotricity of the Evolutionary Age, in 2016. She graduated with honors with a thesis entitled "Sensory disorders in the first year of life in patients with unilateral injury: incidence and correlation with the development of motor skills and visual functions", under the supervision of Prof. Guzzetta. She obtained her master's degree in "Visual Impairment Rehabilitation" at the University of Genoa with a thesis entitled "Perception of auditory and visual space in children with hemiplegia, with and without visual field deficiency", under the supervision of Dr. Gori. She gained in 2021 a master's Degree in Rehabilitation Sciences of Health Professions, with honors, with a thesis on the use of magnetic resonance imaging for the early diagnosis of central visual disorders in children with periventricular leucomalacia, under the supervision of Prof. Fantacci and Dr. Tinelli.
Since 2020, she has worked as a therapist at the Vision Laboratory of IRCCS Stella Maris in Pisa. In 2022, she won a doctoral scholarship in Bioengineering and Robotics at the University of Genoa, affiliated with IIT. She is working on the MySpace project in Dr. Gori's research group, 'Unit for Visually Impaired People' (U-VIP).

Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia

Gloria Calafatello obtained a Master's Degree in Human-Computer Interaction at the University of Trento (Italy) in 2022. She spent six months at the Institute of Medical Psychology and Behavioural Neurobiology at Tuebingen University (Germany) to do research for her master's thesis to investigate and identify brain areas capable of predicting motor recovery in stroke patients after the use of rehabilitation therapy with Brain-Computers Interfaces under the supervision of Prof. Andrea Caria and Dr Ander Ramos Murguialday. After her study, she spent six months at the Research centre “The Sense” in Lausanne (Switzerland) as an after-graduation trainee under the supervision of Prof. Micah Murray and Dr Anna Gaglianese, working on a European project to investigate the functional multisensory architecture of the motion processing system. Starting in November 2022 she is a PhD student at the University of Genova affiliated with IIT. Currently, she is working on the MySpace project as a part of the Unit for Visually Impaired People (U-VIP) research group under the supervision of the Dr Gori.

Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia

Helene Vitali obtained her Bachelor's Degree in Neurophysiological Techniques with honors from the IRCCS Mondino Foundation in Pavia in 2018. She then earned her Master's Degree in Neurobiology with honors from the University of Pavia in 2020. For her thesis project, she conducted research within the collaboration between the Italian Institute of Technology and the Child Neuropsychiatry department of Mondino Foundation on cortical activity maturation in blind children. In 2020, she was awarded a doctoral scholarship in Bioengineering and Robotics at the University of Genoa, affiliated with the Italian Institute of Technology, under the supervision of Dr. Monica Gori. Throughout her Ph.D., she investigated the relationship between neural processes during wakefulness and sleep, and multisensory interaction in infants with and without visual impairment. She collaborated with various hospitals and, to advance her research, spent a 4-month period at the Sense research center in Lausanne under the supervision of Prof. Murray. In 2023, thanks to her dedication and hard work, she graduated from the World Sleep Academy after winning a scholarship. She was also recognized for her presentations at conferences by the Italian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology (SINC) and the World Sleep Society. Currently, she is involved in the MySpace project under the guidance of Dr. Gori.

Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia

Lara Coelho is a post-doctoral researcher within UVIP at Italian Institute of Technology (Genova). She completed a master’s in kinesiology (2016) and a Ph.D. (2021) in cognitive neuroscience under the supervision of Dr. Claudia Gonzalez at the University of Lethbridge, Canada. Her graduate research focused on characterizing distorted hand representation in healthy participants. Her research interests also include haptic processing, kinematics of reaching/grasping, perception and action, multisensory integration, and cognitive development. During her Ph.D. she was involved in community-based research interventions that aimed to improve pre-schooler’s executive function skills (Building Brains Together project). She joined the MySpace project at the beginning of 2023, her research focuses on how body representations develop in the absence of vision. She is also interested in how vision and haptics combine to form an accurate body representation in sighted participants.

Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia

Martina Riberto is a post doc researcher at the Italian Institute of Technology (Genoa, Italy). She graduated in Clinical and Health Psychology at the Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele (Milan, Italy) in 2015. She worked as research assistant under the supervision of Prof. Francesco Benedetti at the Psychiatry and Clinical Psychobiology Unit in the Division of Neuroscience of San Raffaele Hospital (Milan, Italy) for two years. After, she became licensed psychologist and in 2022 she obtained a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience and Experimental Psychology as part of an exchange PhD program between the University of Manchester (UK) and the Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel). Her PhD thesis focused on the perception of similarity between emotional events and its implication in post-traumatic stress disorder. She is currently attending a school of specialization in psychotherapy (Instituto Aneb, Milan, Italy) and she is working as a clinical psychologist.

Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia

Maria Casado Palacios holds a Bachelor's degree in Psychology from the University of Seville, Spain, and a Master's degree in Neuroscience from the University Complutense of Madrid. Awarded an Early Stage Researcher position in 2020 within the ITN Marie Skłodowska-Curie Multitouch project, funded by Horizons 2020. Pursuing a Ph.D. in Bioengineering and Robotics at the University of Genoa, affiliated with the Italian Institute of Technology, under the supervision of Dr. Monica Gori. The research focuses on cross-modal perception and deprivation, particularly on tactile and motor interactions in situations of sensory impairment. She collaborated in international projects, spending six months at the Institute of Neuroscience, from UCLouvain, brussels, under the supervision of Professor André Mouraux. She also spent two months at Verbund Katholischer Kliniken Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, under the supervision of Dr. med. Kristina Müller, working with children with hemiparesis. Currently involved in the MySpace project, lead by Monica Gori