معرفی
Silvia Guerra is an Assistant Professor at the University of Padua. Her research focuses on plant behavior, cognition, and movement dynamics, particularly in pea plants. She explores topics like motor intentions, kinematic analysis, and plant communication via chemical signals. Her work bridges botany, neurobiology, and computational methods, analyzing plant interactions with environments using advanced imaging and machine learning techniques.
Key research themes include: plant decision-making during support-seeking, strigolactone-mediated competitive behaviors, handedness in plant growth, and kin recognition through root systems. She investigates plant numerical cognition, quantity discrimination, and social growing patterns. Her studies often employ 3D kinematic systems to analyze root and shoot movements.
Publications highlight interdisciplinary approaches, combining biological studies with robotics and cognitive science frameworks. Notable areas include comparative analysis of animal-plant laterality, motor cognition models, and the application of machine learning for plant behavior classification. Her work challenges traditional boundaries of cognition by proposing plants exhibit complex sensory and decision-making capabilities.
Current projects explore plant communication via volatile organic compounds, social growing dynamics, and the neurophysiological parallels between plant and animal motor control systems. She collaborates across disciplines to develop novel methodologies for studying plant intelligence.
