Research interests

I am interested in the cognitive and neural basis of objects, agents, and events conceptual representations – how they are organized and what sources of information contribute to their acquisition.

What are the key dimensions distinguishing among concrete entities (e.g. a fox, a tepee), among events (e.g. looking and seeing, glowing and blazing), and among  people (e.g. a bride, a fool, someone born blind)?
What is the role of first-person experience, our social interactions, and the linguistic input in acquiring these representations?

To answer these questions, I conduct behavioral and imaging research with young children and with people with different life experiences (e.g. congenitally blind individuals).

Academia me

I am a post-doct with Susan Gelman in the Psychology Department at the University of Michigan.

I completed my PhD in Psychological and Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, working with Marina Bedny and with Barbara Landau.
Before coming to the USA, I earned a MSc in Cognitive Sciences (Neuroscience) at the University of Trento – CIMeC, where I was advised by Olivier Collignon, and the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA).

I always loved the “academia is like a family” simile, so here’s my academic tree.