Our history
The Tactile Perception and Learning Lab was founded in 1997,
when Mathew Diamond established his research activity in SISSA.
Current members
Lab members come from various backgrounds and are focused on different projects, read more about the experiments we are currently conducting on the Research page.
Feel free to contact us for details about our research projects and academic experience!
Davide Giana
Post Doc
Davide joined the lab in 2017 during his Master's Degree in Neuroscience at the University of Trieste. He began his Ph.D. project in 2019 and is currently working as a post-doc in the lab in collaboration with Cynexo.
Yukti Chopra
PhD student, Year IV
Yukti joined the Lab as a graduate student in 2021. Currently she's investigating memory systems under perceptual one back memory task using human behaviour.
Aybüke Durmaz
PhD student, Year III
adurmaz@sissa.it
Aybüke joined the Lab during her Master's degree in Cognitive Neuroscience in 2020 as a part of a joint program between SISSA & CIMeC. She is currently doing her Ph.D. under the supervision of Domenica Bueti (SISSA/Neuroscience), and co-supervision by Mathew Diamond, as well as Edgar Roldan (ICTP/Statistical physics). Her Ph.D. project mainly focuses on human perceptual decision-making of nonequilibrium fluctuations, which is a physical property of stimulus dynamics used in statistical thermodynamics.
Maria Ravera
PhD student, Year III
Maria joined the Lab in 2019 during her Master's degree in Cognitive Neuroscience as a part of a joint program between SISSA & CIMeC. Her Ph.D. research is focused on understanding the combination between the sensory and non-sensory aspects of decision-making in rats and humans.
Marlen Gironimi
PhD student, Year II
Marlen joined the Lab in 2021, during her Master's degree in Cognitive Neuroscience. Her Ph.D. project focuses on investigating how executive functions are implemented in the tactile sensory system of rodents.
Monica Paoletti
PhD student, Year I
Monica joined the Lab in 2023 as a PhD student after completing her Master’s degree in Mathematics. Her PhD research is carried out in collaboration with Eugenio Piasini’s Lab. Her focus is the development of the brain's model of choice strategies adopted by humans and rats in sequential decision-making experiments.
Elif Duran
pre-doc student
eduran@sissa.it
Elif joined the lab in 2024, as a pre-PhD student, after completing her Master's degree in Experimental Psychology in Turkey.
Lilith Filaferro
pre-doc student
Lilith joined the Lab in 2022 during her International Master's Degree in Neuroscience from the University of Trieste for her curricular internship. She is focusing on understanding the underlying neural mechanisms of perceptual judgment in rodents.
Tatiana Potracov
Master student
Tatiana joined the lab in 2024 as an intern during her Master's degree in Neuroscience from the University of Trieste.
Alumni
Alessandro Toso - now Post Doc at the Center for Experimental Medicine in Hamburg, Germany
Annachiara Guglietti - now Ph.D. student at Bordeaux Neurocampus, France
Arash Fassihi Zakeri - now Post Doc at the University of California San Diego, USA
Arianna Cella - now Ph.D. student in the Department for BioMedical Research at Bern University, Switzerland
Iacopo Hachen - now Post Doc at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior at Konstanz, Germany
Lisa Fontana - now Ph.D. student in the Cognitive Ecology Group, Australian National University
Mario Fontanini - now Ph.D. student in the Neurons and Nanomaterials Lab, SISSA, Italy
Sebastian Reinartz - now Post Doc in the Brain and Sound Lab, Basel University, Switzerland
Zahra Yousefi Darani - now Post Doc at the German Primate Center, Göttingen, Germany
We collaborate with SISSA's Mechatronics unit and CyNexo, a SISSA start-up, for custom designed hardware and software.
