Stefania Bracci

Stefania Bracci is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science at the University of Trento, Italy, and a Principal Investigator of the Object Vision group at the Center for Mind/Brain Sciences (CIMeC). She holds academic positions since 2011, including roles as a Research Fellow at KU Leuven (2016–2019) and Postdoctoral Fellow (2014–2016). Her research focuses on human visual cortex organization, employing behavioral experiments, neuroimaging (e.g., fMRI, MEG), and deep neural networks (DNNs). She has organized scientific meetings like CAOs and serves as a reviewer for top journals such as PNAS, Nature Communications, and NeuroImage.

Education: PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience (Northumbria University, UK, 2011), MSc in Neuropsychology (University of Bologna, 2007), and BSc in Psychology (University of Bologna, 2005). Her doctoral thesis explored Neural Correlates of Hand-Tool Interaction.

Research Interests: Visual perception, object and body representation, MVPA, DNNs, and functional neuroimaging. She investigates how visual cortex encodes objects and body parts through cross-modal and computational approaches.

Awards: FWO grants (2016–2019), travel awards from Elsevier and Brain Research Foundation, and multiple conference abstract awards (2010–2013). She has also received prestigious scholarships, including a PhD grant from Northumbria University.

Teaching: Coordinates courses like Computational Modelling of Perception and Advanced Hands-on fMRI Analysis at CIMeC. She also contributed to Cognitive Neuroscience and Human Brain Neuroimaging modules.

Labs/Teams: Leads the Object Vision group at CIMeC, focusing on interdisciplinary research merging neuroscience, AI, and experimental psychology.