Eleonora Russo

Eleonora Russo is an Assistant Professor and Principal Investigator of the Brain Dynamics Laboratory at the BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna in Pisa, Italy. Her career includes positions as an Independent Research Fellow at Johannes Gutenberg University (2021–2023) and the Central Institute of Mental Health (2020–2021), supported by the Chica and Heinz Foundation. She holds a PhD in Neuroscience from SISSA (2012) and earlier degrees in Physics from the University of Pisa (B.Sc. 2005, M.Sc. 2007).

Her research integrates computational modeling with experimental neuroscience to study cognitive processes, particularly focusing on neural assembly dynamics in the brain. This includes analyzing hippocampal-prefrontal interactions, reward systems, and olfactory learning using machine learning techniques. Key innovations involve unsupervised methods for decoding neural signals and understanding context-dependent information encoding.

• Scientific Awards: Independent Research Fellow of the Chica and Heinz Foundation

Her work bridges cognitive science and systems biology, with recent studies exploring dopamine’s role in reward prediction and oxytocin’s impact on social cognition. Ongoing projects investigate neural coordination in the zona incerta and motor cortex decoding for neuroprosthetics.