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PhD students

Danila Di Domenico

Danila Di Domenico is a PhD student in Biomedical Science (University of Pavia), holds a Bachelor in Biological Sciences (University of Milano Bicocca) and a Master’s degree in Neurobiology (University of Pavia). Techniques: In vivo electrophysiology and optogenetics on mice. Research field: characterization of cerebellar interaction with other areas of the brain. 

 

Eleonora Pali

Eleonora Pali is a PhD student in Biomedical Sciences at the Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences (University of Pavia). She holds a bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences cum laude (University of Florence) and a master’s degree in Neurobiology cum laude (University of Pavia).

Combining in vitro electrophysiological approaches with optogenetics, her Ph.D. project is focused on investigating the spatiotemporal processing of inputs in the cerebellar cortex. She is also deciphering a key mechanism of dendritic processing that implements spike-timing dependent plasticity in cerebellar Golgi cells using the whole-cell patch clamp technique.

Alessandra Ottaviani 

Alessandra is a PhD student in Biomedical Science (University of Pavia). She holds a Bachelor in Biological Science at Marche Polytechnic University and obtained the Master’s degree in Neurobiology cum laude in January 2019, at University of Pavia.

During the master thesis, she developed a realistic model of Cerebellar Basket Cell, using PYTHON+NEURON, in order to investigate morphological and biophysical features of this cell and the role that plays in cerebellar circuit.

As a part of her PhD project on computational neuroscience, she’s using BluePyopt, Matlab and doing simulation on cluster in order to optimize and analyse neuron models.

Research field: Modelling of Neurovascular Coupling in the cerebellar circuits.

Robin De Schepper

Robin De Schepper is a PhD student in Computational Neuroscience at the University of Pavia, graduated in Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience Magna Cum Laude from the University of Antwerp. Their master thesis expanded the Tsodyks-Markram model for short-term synaptic plasticity to explain previously uncaptured supralinear facilitation. They followed an internship at the Receptor Biology Lab of prof. dr. Stuart Maudsley where they developed Pyxis, a pipeline that mines the academic text body for data to compare signatures of GPCR ligands to disease signatures. They are interested in open access and distributing open source software that benefits the neuroscience community.

Roberta Lorenzi

Roberta Lorenzi  holds a M.Sc. in Bioengineering at University of Pavia. During her studies, Roberta developed a special interest in healthcare-oriented machine learning and programming. In her thesis work, she investigated the involvement of spinal cord in dementia disease, applying machine learning algorithms to Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

Roberta is now focused on the programming of brain activity simulations through The Virtual Brain (TVB) simulator. In addition, she is implementing a computational model of the cerebellum, aiming to reproduce cerebellar activity, compatible with TVB and other brain simulators technology”.

 

Marta Gaviraghi

Marta Gaviraghi is a Ph.D. student at University of Pavia – Dept. of Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering. She holds a M.Sc. in Bioengineering at University of Pavia. In her thesis work, she developed an automatic method (based on deep learning) for segmentation of dentate nuclei in Magnetic Resonance Image.

Marta is now focused on the reconstruction of quantitative diffusion maps from k-space of Diffusion Weighted Images.

 

Camilla Ciapponi

 
Camilla is a PhD student of the CEN training network. She received her B.Sc in Biology from Università di Milano and went on to do a M.Sc in Neurobiology at Università di Pavia. During her M.Sc thesis at Erasmus MC in Rotterdam she investigated the role of the cerebellum in orofacial behaviours using in vivo MEA in awake mice. She then worked in the Suvrathan Lab at McGill University exploring the heterogeneity of plasticity rules across the cerebellum using patch clamp. Her PhD project aims at investigating the contribution of the cerebellum to the brain’s emotional networks by  performing microendoscopic calcium imaging in freely moving mice.
 
 

Dianela Osorio

Dianela is a PhD student of the CEN (Cerebellum and Emotional Networks) Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network at the University of Pavia. She holds a degree in Physics at the University of the Andes (ULA) Mérida-Venezuela and master degree in Physics of Complex Systems at the Institute For Cross- Disciplinary Physics And Complex Systems (IFISC) – University Of The Balearic Island (Uib) Palma De Mallorca-Spain.

 

Yuhe Li

Elena Grosso

Elena Grosso is a Ph.D. student in Biomedical Sciences at the Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences of the University of Pavia, Italy. She holds a degree in Physics at the University of Genova and a master’s degree in Biomedical Physics at the University of Pavia.
Her master’s degree thesis, which has the title “Physics and physiology: the effect of water
diffusion model assumptions on MRI-derived microstructure parameters”, was focused on MRI Diffusion models, expecially on Neurite Orientation Dispersion and Density Imaging (NODDI) model and its assumptions.
Elena is now focused on her Ph.D. project “Advanced modeling of magnetic resonance imaging data to study the underpinning of neurological symptoms of long-COVID”, which is part of the MODEL-COV Project at UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology (London).