Since 2006, the Alexander Bodini Foundation has supported researchers in Developmental and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Academy. The Foundation has also provided funding—in some periods—in other areas, with its Fellowship in Culture and Religion, Fellowship in Global Development and Finance, and Fellowship in Globalism to Nationalism and Populism.
Like other Academy Fellows, the Bodini Fellows spend one or two academic semesters in residence at the Italian Academy. The Academy provides office space and support, aid in finding convenient housing for the duration of the Fellowship, and opportunities for the organization of public lectures, seminars, conferences and publication. The Bodini Fellows are expected to participate in the life of the Academy, including the weekly luncheon seminars with the other Fellows. Independent research, however, is foremost, and Bodini Fellows are encouraged to make use of all of Columbia's facilities.
The Alexander Bodini Fellowship in Psychiatry is intended for a child psychiatrist or developmental neuroscientist who intends to work in a Columbia laboratory in fields pertinent to his or her own. Relevant Columbia University resources include a large and varied Department of Child Psychiatry at the College of Physicians & Surgeons, with its far-reaching clinical service that is organized into subspecialty clinics serving children and teens with autism, depression and anxiety and disruptive disorders, and an outstanding MRI laboratory. Other areas of strength are psychiatric epidemiology; psychotherapy research and especially cognitive behavior therapy for anxiety disorders and interpersonal therapy for mood disorders; psychopharmacology of anxiety, depression and autism and early onset ADHD; classification and diagnosis; suicide and suicide prevention; eating disorders; and services research. The Department of General Psychiatry has considerable resources in genetics, in psychosis, depression and anxiety disorders, PET imaging and neuroanatomy. More details and deadlines are on the Fellowship Program page, along with news on the Academy opportunities in other fields.
Listed below are all past and current Bodini Fellows in all disciplines.
Bodini Fellows
Independent Scholar (Italy)
The illness of desire: a cultural history of heroin 1996–2018
2021-2022: Fall
Alexander Bodini Research Fellow in Developmental and Adolescent Psychiatry
Vanessa Roghi is a historian. She holds a Ph.D. in Contemporary History. She has been teaching visual history at La Sapienza University, Rome for the past 15 years. Her research has focused on the impact of historical communication through films and television on contemporary imaginaries. She is the author and director of numerous historical documentaries. She has been working on two research projects financed by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) on Mussolini and the film industry in twentieth-century Italy. Her cultural history of heroin consumption in Italy is the first recent account on this topic. She studies the history of intellectuals, ideas, and margins.
Website: https://vanessaroghi.com
Columbia University
Data fusion and data modeling: how Big Data can help us understand the development of illness in adolescents at ultra-high risk for psychosis.
2014-2015: Fall
Alexander Bodini Research Fellow in Developmental and Adolescent Psychiatry
Tiziano Colibazzi, M.D., is Assistant Professor of Clinical Neuroscience in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University. He is also on faculty at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. Dr Colibazzi's research focuses on understanding mechanisms that lead to the development of psychotic illness through the use of anatomical imaging, functional imaging (fMRI), DTI and resting state imaging. These imaging modalities are combined through a variety of multivariate methods with the goal of identifying biological predictors of psychosis.
Columbia University/NYSPI
Longitudinal imaging of adolescents at risk for schizophrenia
2009-2010
Alexander Bodini Research Fellow in Developmental and Adolescent Psychiatry
Tiziano Colibazzi, M.D., is Assistant Professor of Clinical Neuroscience in the Department of Child Psychiatry at Columbia University. Dr Colibazzi's research has encompassed several topics including using fMRI to probe emotional circuitry in humans and exploring structure and shape in the normal brain and in schizophrenia. More recently, Dr. Colibazzi's research has focused on understanding how the adolescent brain changes throughout development and whether this knowledge can help us predict who will develop schizophrenia.
Università di Milano – Bicocca
Pious bodies and Sensuous spirits: Sufi experiences and vocabularies in contemporary Egypt
2012-2013: Fall and Spring
Alexander Bodini Research Fellow in Culture and Religion
Paola Abenante graduated from La Sapienza University in Rome and did her master's degree in Anthropology and Ethnography at the EHESS (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) in Paris.
She received her Ph.D. in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Milano-Bicocca in 2010 with a thesis on Sufism and religious subjectivity in contemporary Egypt.
Ethnographically her work describes the vocabulary and semantic scenes that inform Sufi praxis today and explores how individual Sufi disciples concretely mobilize beliefs and ritual practices to make sense of their everyday life. This combined analysis sheds light on the hermeneutic openings and inner tensions of the Islamic living religious tradition, thus questioning conventional understandings of Islam as a coherent set of doctrines and rituals that impose on human beings. On a theoretical level, the research specifically deals with the relation between phenomenological modes of analysis -- centering on notions of time, embodiment and the constitution of the religious self -- and the analysis of the discursive dynamics within the religious field in Egypt.
During her post-doc at the Center for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at the University of Bergen, her work centered on how people's religious commitment is constrained and reshaped by the urgency of social, economic and political conditions. In particular, since she started her collaboration as associate researcher at the IREMAM (Institut de Recherches et d'Etudes sur le Monde Arabe et Musulman) in Aix en Provence in 2009, her work has dealt with the interplay between structural conditions of migration, religious networks and individual experience.Università di Palermo
Post-war reconstruction and regional development. World Bank development policy in Italy, 1947–1967
2009-2010
Alexander Bodini Research Fellow in Global Development and Finance
Michele Alacevich is a research fellow at the University of Palermo, Italy. His research interests include the political economy of international organizations in historical perspective, the contemporary history of economic development and financial institutions, the role of economic advisors in international relations, and the history of development economics in the twentieth century.
Michele obtained his Ph.D. in Economic and Business History at the University of Milano in 2006. His Ph.D. thesis was published as The Political Economy of the World Bank:The Early Years, by Stanford University Press, 2009 (originally published in Italian in 2007 by Bruno Mondadori and forthcoming in French, Russian and Spanish). He has also co-authored, with Daniela Parisi, Economia politica. Un'introduzione storica, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2009, and is the author of several articles published in scholarly journals on the history of economic institutions and ideas after World War II. Michele has been a consultant to the World Bank for historical research.
At the Italian Academy, Michele will work on his next book on the policies for regional development after World War II and the World Bank loans to Italy, from 1948 to1965. This book is the final outcome of his research program at the University of Palermo on regional economic backwardness in historical perspective and the Italian Mezzogiorno, and will appear in the series of historical studies of Banca d'Italia, published by Laterza.Università di Milano – Bicocca (Italy)
What the people want: an analysis of the populist trend in Italy
2019-2020: Spring
Alexander Bodini Fellow in Transitions from Globalism to Nationalism and Populism
Marina Calloni has since 2002 been a full professor in social and political philosophy at the Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Milano-Bicocca in Milan. She is deputy president of the Italian Society of Political Philosophy (SIFP) and delegate of the Rector for International Cooperation. She is director of the departmental research center "PRAGSIA" concerning issues of public concerns and of the center ADV - Against Domestic Violence with the related master on "Violence against women and children”. In 2020 she will be the Alexander Bodini Fellow in Transitions from Globalism to Nationalism and Populism at The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America, Columbia University, New York.
She has a Ph.D. in Philosophy (University of Pavia) and a Ph.D. in Social and Political Science (European University Institute in Florence). She was a research fellow at the University of Frankfurt under J. Habermas and a senior researcher and director of the International Network on Research on Gender at the London School of Economics. She was a visiting professor at the Universities of Bremen, Vienna, Lugano, Kurume. She earned a Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the University of Notre Dame (USA). She has lectured and given presentations in many cities and countries. She was a component of the Inter-ministerial Committee for Human Rights at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Rome and a member of the management board of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights.
She is a member of various national and international boards of journals and has participated/is participating in several national and international research projects and cross-border networks, collaborating with universities, research centers, NGOs and supranational institutions. In particular, she has collaborated with many international institutions including the European Commission, UNESCO, UNDP, and UNHCR. She is now working with the Council of Europe for a project she directs on the application of the Istanbul Convention.
Areas of Interest include: social and political philosophy; democracy, citizenship and representation; conflicts and humanitarianism; human rights and fundamental freedoms; critical theory of society; gender issues; critique of violence; international research networks and cross-border co-operation.Recent publications include: Women, Minorities, Populism in: A. Vajpeyi, V. Kaul (eds.), Minorities and Populism. Comparative Perspectives from India and Europe, London: Springer, 2019; Southern Europe: Gender Studies and Institutions in the Euro-Mediterranean Region in B. Kortendiek, B. Riegraf, K. Sabisch (eds.), Handbuch Interdisziplinäre Geschlechterforschung, Wiesbaden: Springer, 2019, vol. 2, pp. 1547-1558; Intersectionality and Women’s Human Rights: From Social Criticism to the Creation of Capabilities in: E. H. Oleksy, A. M. Różalska and M. M. Wojtaszek (eds.), The Personal of the Political: Transgenerational Dialogues in Contemporary European Feminisms, Newcastel-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015, pp. 65-85; Libertà individuale, giustizia sociale e lotta contro ogni oppressione. Il socialismo liberale di Carlo Rosselli in: Politica & Società, 2018, n. 3, pp. 319-352; Images of fear in political philosophy and fairy tales: Linking private abuse to political violence in human rights discourse in: Journal of International Political Theory, 2016, vol. 12, n. 1, pp. 67–89.
Università di Napoli Federico II
The role of formins in synaptotoxic damage and cognitive decline induced by amyloid beta
2016-2017: Spring
Alexander Bodini Research Fellow in Developmental and Adolescent Psychiatry
Maria Elena Pero is an Assistant Professor in Veterinary Physiology and Lecturer in Veterinary Neurophysiology at the Università di Napoli Federico II in Naples, Italy. She holds an M.D. in Veterinary Medicine and a PhD in Comparative Morphology and Physiology. She was a visiting scientist at the Taub Institute of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and the Aging Brain at Columbia University where she conducted research to elucidate the mechanisms by which physiological levels of amyloid beta peptide (Aβ1-42), the peptide that abnormally accumulates in the brains of AD patients, positively modulates synaptic plasticity. During her stay at the Italian Academy, she will focus on the pathological role played by neurotoxic levels of Aβ1-42 on synaptic plasticity through formin-mediated regulation of the neuronal cytoskeleton using cellular and animal models of Alzheimer’s disease.
Università di Torino
Perinatal stress effects on emotional circuits in juvenile depression
2018-2019: Spring
Alexander Bodini Research Fellow in Developmental and Adolescent Psychiatry
Marco Cambiaghi was born in Como in 1981. He is a neuroscience research fellow at the University of Turin, Italy, working on the storage of emotional memories. He got his degree in Biology at the University of Milan and a PhD in Neuroscience and Experimental Neurology at the San Raffaele University in Milan. He performed his research at the San Raffaele Scientific Institute of Milan and at the University of Turin, gaining experience in in-vivo electrophysiological techniques, rodent behavior and brain stimulation. He has worked as a visiting scientist at the City University of New York, Columbia University and the Weizmann Institute of Science.
In addition to his research, he has a strong interest in the history of science and in scientific dissemination; he collaborates with two Italian newspapers (La Stampa and La Provincia di Como, where he has published more than 200 articles since 2004) and he is one of the founders of the scientific Festival della Luce (Light Festival), held in Como since 2013.
During his stay at the Italian Academy, he will focus on the effects of perinatal stress on adolescent depression development in a murine preclinical model. In particular, he will investigate brain emotional circuits through behavioral and neurophysiological analysis.National University of Mongolia
A comparative study of social life and religious beliefs in Italy and Mongolia
2009-2010: Fall
Alexander Bodini Research Fellow in Culture and Religion
A professor at the National University of Mongolia (NUM), she got an M.A. at Saint Petersburg University's Faculty of Philosophy in 1983 and a Ph.D. at the Mongolian Academy of Sciences in 1995. In 1983-1995 she was a researcher at the Mongolian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Philosophy; since 1996 she has lectured on "Buddhist philosophy," "Philosophy of religion," and "History of Mongolian religion and philosophy" to the Philosophy and Religion Studies students of NUM. She has published seven books and more than 40 academic articles.
Columbia University
The role of smoking in cocaine addiction
2012-2013
Alexander Bodini Research Fellow in Developmental and Adolescent Psychiatry
After receiving his B.Sc. in Functional Genomics and Bioinformatics from the University of Milan, Luca Colnaghi moved to New York City in 2007, where in 2011 he received a PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the NYU Langone Medical Center. He is now continuing his studies in the laboratory of Eric Kandel at Columbia University. He currently works on the molecular mechanisms of drug addiction and metaplasticity in the brain. Metaplasticity ascertains that past experiences may change synaptic architecture and neural circuitry, so that when another event comes along, it is experienced differently than if the past experience did not occur. He is studying how pre-exposure to nicotine and other drugs affect the systemic response to cocaine.
Università di Pisa
Genomics of suicidal behavior
2010-2011
Alexander Bodini Research Fellow in Developmental and Adolescent Psychiatry
Laura Bevilacqua received her M.D. in 2005 from the University of Pisa, Italy, where she also trained as a psychiatrist. In the last two years she has been a Fogarty fellow in the Laboratory of Neurogenetics, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, USA, where she focused on functional genomics and in particular on the role of serotonin and dopamine domain genes in impulsivity and dyscontrol towards the identification of functional alleles in addictions and related behaviors.
University of Haifa
Ius commune, exploitation, and emancipation
2010-2011: Fall
Alexander Bodini Research Fellow in Culture and Religion
Kenneth Stow has devoted over forty years to studying the relations between the Church and the Jews in the Middle Ages and into early modern times. His studies are both diachronic and synchronic. He has written essays tracing developments in papal policies from the early Church through the eighteenth century, and he has concentrated on the history of the Jews in Rome in the early modern period, which is to say, the longtime theoretical developments applied in practice. In all his studies, he has emphasized the role of law, canon law and ius commune, in particular, in shaping first thinking and then action with respect to the Jews. He will spend his time as a Fellow at the Italian Academy studying the texts of these two legal traditions housed in the Columbia libraries, especially those in the Diamond Law Library, which is a unique collection.
Sapienza Università di Roma
Should I stay or should I go? Neural underpinnings of inhibitory control of voluntary arm movements in pharmacoresistant epileptic patients
2017-2018: Spring
Alexander Bodini Research Fellow in Developmental and Adolescent Psychiatry
Giovanni Mirabella is assistant professor of physiology at Sapienza University of Rome. He graduated in biology at the University of Trieste, where he also got a PhD in Neuroscience at the International School of Advanced studies.
His main interest lies in the neural underpinnings of the genesis of voluntary actions, as he believes they could offer the best experimental model for understanding how ‘free will’ can emerge from brain activity. Following Libet’s original intuition, i.e. free will would not be tied to our ability to select and choose actions but would rely on our ability to suppress them, about 15 years ago he started to study the neural basis of the so-called volitional inhibition. He has designed a reaching version of the stop signal paradigm and has used this paradigm while recording brain activity of monkeys, while causally manipulating the status of subthalamic nuclei by activating or deactivating the deep brain stimulators (DBS) in Parkinson’s patients, and while recording the electrocorticographic activity (ECoG) in pharmacoresistant epileptic patients. From this bulk of studies, he has proposed the intriguing hypothesis that the performance of actions and their suppression are not specified by independent sets of brain regions. Rather, acting and stopping seems to be functions emerging from specific interactions between largely overlapping brain regions, whose activity is intimately linked (directly or indirectly) to the evaluations of pros and cons of an action.
He has also studied the relationship between action language and language understanding in the frame of the embodied theory of language, suggesting that motor cortices are involved to some extent in language understanding.
As a fellow of the Italian Academy he will try to develop the above mentioned working hypotheses.
He has extensive experience in designing and executing behavioral studies both in healthy and unhealthy people (such as patients with Parkinson's disease, Tourette syndrome, obsessive-compulsive disorder and primary motor stereotypies), and in recording electrophysiological signals from the brain (multielectrode and intracerebral electroencephalographic activity). He is currently serving as Associate Editor of Frontiers in Neural Technology and of Parkinson’s Disease.
Stanford University
Climate and the effects of the change in weather variability on consumption, savings and investment
2012-2013: Spring
Alexander Bodini Research Fellow in Global Development and Finance
Giacomo De Giorgi graduated from the Universita' Luigi Bocconi in Milan.
His Ph.D., from the Department of Economics of the University College London, focused on development, labor economics, and applied microeconometrics.
In July 2006 he joined the Department of Economics at Stanford University. He is a member of BREAD, CEGA, CEPR, NBER and SCID/SIEPR.
He has held visiting positions at UC Berkeley, Columbia University, the NY Fed, UAB-MOVE, and Bocconi. His work has appeared in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Public Economics, the American Economic Journal, and the Journal of the European Economic Association.
He is currently working on: climate and development; business literacy and development; informality and productivity; risk sharing and consumption insurance; indirect effects of aid policies; demand estimation; social interactions; consumption inequality, migration; and evaluation of ALMPs.Università di Padova and Columbia University
Combined analysis of multimodal brain imaging data for the study and prevention of major depressive disorders in high risk offspring
2011-2012
Alexander Bodini Research Fellow in Developmental and Adolescent Psychiatry
Francesca Zanderigo has always enjoyed applying her mathematical skills to define and solve problems related to human health care. As a graduate student at the Department of Information Engineering, University of Padova, Italy, she focused on the quantitative analysis of cerebral hemodynamics in patients with carotid artery stenosis using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) (Zanderigo et al., IEEE Transaction on Biomedical Engineering 56(5), 2009, 1287-97), and the hypo/ hyperglycemia prevention in diabetics by on-line monitoring and prediction of blood glucose concentration (Sparacino et al., Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice 74, 2006, S160-S163; Sparacino et al., IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering 54(5), 2007, 931- 937; Zanderigo et al., Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology 1(5), 2007, 645-651). As a Research Scientist for the interdisciplinary Division of Molecular Imaging and Neuropathology, Department of Psychiatry and New York State Psychiatric Institute, Columbia University, she implemented mathematical models to analyze Positron Emission Tomography (PET) data in neuroreceptors system investigations. Specifically, Dr. Zanderigo developed a Bayesian approach to reduce the estimates variability in parametric images generation (Zanderigo et al., Nuclear Medicine and Biology 37, 2010, 443-51) and the application of alternative fitting methods to improve the sensitivity in occupancy studies (Zanderigo et al., Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism 30(7), 2010, 1366-72), and collaborated in the assessment of a minimally invasive approach for PET data analysis (Ogden et al., Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism 30(4), 2010, 816-26), the investigation of new radioligands (DeLorenzo et al., Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism 29(7), 2009, 1332-45; Milak et al., Journal of Nuclear Medicine 51(12), 2010, 1892-900), and their use in the study of the serotonin neurotransmitter system (Parsey et al., Biological Psychiatry 68(2), 2010, 170-8). She recently began working on the combined analysis of multimodal brain images (i.e. PET, MRI, Diffusion Tensor Imaging, functional MRI) to provide biomarkers for personalized treatment of Major Depressive Disorders in high risk offspring by predicting and identifying individual factors that may favor certain treatments over others. She is also investigating and developing a novel unified automated approach for PET non-invasive full quantification to promote the use of PET in clinical practice.
Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine, Seton Hall University (USA)
Alexander Bodini Research Fellow in Developmental and Adolescent Psychiatry
Effects of transcranial direct current stimulation on mood, craving, and relapses in drug users with depression
2023–2024: Spring
Fortunato Battaglia, MD, PhD, is a Professor of Medical Sciences and Neurology at the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine. Dr. Battaglia earned his medical degree from the University of Messina, Italy. He completed a residency in neurology at the University of Messina and a fellowship at the National Institute of Health (NINDS). Dr. Battaglia’s clinical and research interests include developing plasticity-based interventions for neuropsychiatric diseases, especially for patients with treatment-resistant depression, and neurodegenerative diseases. He has expertise in clinical neurophysiology and brain stimulation techniques including transcranial magnetic stimulation and transcranial direct current stimulation. A primary aim of his translational research program is to investigate cortical plastic changes in motor, cognitive, and emotional circuits and to use this information to better understand the pathophysiology of neuropsychiatric diseases and to further optimize treatment effectiveness, with a particular emphasis in brain stimulation therapies, and integrative medicine. In addition, has developed an international medical education research line focusing on investigating predictors of mental health and academic outcomes which gives medical student an opportunity to participate in mentored medical research. Under this mentorship model trainees develop skills, pursue their individual neuroscience research interests, and enhance their education beyond the core curriculum.
University of Vermont
The Jews of Italy and Spanish imperial power
2010-2011: Fall
Alexander Bodini Research Fellow in Culture and Religion
Flora Cassen grew up in Antwerp, Belgium. She received her BA in Law and History from the Free University of Brussels, her MA in Comparative History from Brandeis University, and her PhD in History and Judaic Studies from New York University in 2007. At the Italian Academy, she will complete her book manuscript "Identity or Control: the Jewish badge in Renaissance Italy." Based on her doctoral research, this book studies the discriminatory marks, typically a yellow hat or a yellow badge, that the Jews were compelled to wear in fifteenth and sixteenth century Italy. Her work contributes to understanding the social life of the Jews in Renaissance Italy, the relations they had with secular or religious authorities, and how clothing can be used to regulate society. Her research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the Belgian Academy of Rome, the Medieval Academy of America, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, and the Vidal Sassoon Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism. In 2011 she will start working as an assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris
Relativism in democracy: Catholic political thought and the role of truth in politics
2013-2014: Fall
Alexander Bodini Research Fellow in Culture and Religion
St. Mary's College of Maryland
Kabbalistic notions of time in Italian Renaissance thought
2011-2012: Spring
Alexander Bodini Research Fellow in Culture and Religion
Brian Ogren is a scholar of religion with a concentration on Jewish thought in the Italian Renaissance. He was raised in California, was educated in the United States and in Israel, and has spent extensive periods of time studying in Europe. Similar to his own personal trajectories between worlds, his intellectual concentration has been upon the flow and reception of ideas among diverse intellectual communities. He has examined issues of change and continuity in the thought of learned Jews and Christians, including their modes of argumentation as a means of shaping identity. He is attracted to themes of center and margin, interior and exterior, and differing notions of time, space, and self. As a fellow at the Italian Academy, Brian will be exploring kabbalistic concepts of cyclical time in Italian Renaissance thought. This is an ongoing project that examines the construction of history, as well as the usage of eschatology, for polemical purposes related to differing ideas of "messianism."
Columbia University
Consequences of prenatal nicotine exposure on nicotine and cocaine addiction during adolescence
2013-2014: Fall and Spring
Alexander Bodini Research Fellow in Developmental and Adolescent Psychiatry
Bettina Drisaldi is an Associate Research Scientist in the Department of Neuroscience at Columbia University. She studied Biological Sciences at the University of Pavia, Italy, where she also obtained her PhD in Genetics. In 1998 she was awarded a Fullbright fellowship to study Neurobiology in the USA. After spending three years at Washington University in St. Louis, MO, where she worked in the laboratory of David A. Harris on the molecular characteristics of prion proteins, in 2001 she moved to University of Toronto, to work as a postdoctorsal fellow in the laboratory of David Westaway at the Centre for Research in Neurodenerative Diseases.
After accepting a position in the Laboratory of Eric Kandel she is now studying the consequences of prenatal nicotine exposure on nicotine and cocaine addiction during adolescence and adult life.
Moreover, since addiction is considered to arise from a maladaptive persistent associative memory of a highly pleasurable experience, she is also working on the analysis of the molecular putative role in cocaine addiction of a protein associated to the maintenance and consolidation of hippocampal long-term memories.
Sapienza Università di Roma
Structure and function of the SRD5A enzyme family: new targets for schizophrenia and other neuropsychiatric disorders
2015-2016: Spring
Alexander Bodini Research Fellow in Developmental and Adolescent Psychiatry
Beatrice Vallone, PhD, is a Professor of Biochemistry at La Sapienza Università di Roma and currently a Visiting Professor in the Dept. of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics of Columbia University. Dr. Vallone investigates the structure of proteins to understand their role in human physiology and pathology, in order to set the basis for innovative therapies.
Highlights of her career include having determined the structure of neuroglobin, a protein that plays a crucial role in neuronal protection, and having made substantial contribution to the field of protein engineering for creating blood substitutes and producing new antibiotics.
As a fellow of the Italian Academy she will study testosterone alpha dehydrogenases, a family of membrane-embedded enzymes involved in the production of neurosteroids and in steroid activation. These are promising targets in psychiatry and oncology and an understanding of their structure will help in the design of novel drugs for severely debilitating pathologies.Web page: http://www.farmaciamedicina.uniroma1.it/files/CV/CV_VALLONE_BEATRICE_EN.pdf
Università di Bologna
The relationship between democracy and inequality in developed and stable economies
2011-2012: Spring
Alexander Bodini Research Fellow in Global Development and Finance
Anna Soci studied in Bologna (I) and Princeton (USA). She is currently Full Professor of Economics at the University of Bologna, life-member of Clare Hall in Cambridge (UK), Visitor at the Land Economy Department, University of Cambridge (UK) and member of the Academy Advisory Board of the Network for European Studies, University of Helsinki. Responsible of several international and national research projects, she has just finished coordinating the project TERA financed by the European Union in the 6FP. Dr. Soci's main research topics have been through time, social accounting frameworks, new-economic geography, foreign direct investment, and macroeconomic theory. Her research work was published in refereed international and national journals and presented in international and national seminars and conferences. Her personal web page is http://www2.dse.unibo.it/dsa/profile.php?id=81
Columbia University: Research Foundation for Mental Hygiene, Inc., New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI; U.S.A.)
Identifying the neural correlates of fear generalization during development
2019-2020: Fall and Spring
Alexander Bodini Research Fellow in Developmental and Adolescent Psychiatry
Dr. Alessia Mastrodonato works in Dr. Christine Ann Denny’s Laboratory at Columbia University as postdoctoral fellow. She got her degree in Neurobiology at Sapienza University of Rome and a PhD in Neuroscience at Catholic University School of Medicine in Rome.
Her work focuses on investigating the mechanisms underlying ketamine-induced stress resilience and how individual memories are modified by ketamine administration. She is author of several papers in high impact factor journals, but most importantly, within two years of joining her lab at Columbia, she has published two first-authored manuscripts in Biological Psychiatry and Scientific Reports and co-author a third manuscript in Neuropsychopharmacology. In 2017, she was awarded the Rotary Global Grant to investigate the brain circuits underlying ketamine prophylactic efficacy, and, in 2018, she was awarded the Sackler Award by the Sackler Institute of Developmental Psychobiology at Columbia University to investigate ketamine effects during adolescence. Alessia was recently awarded the 2018 Trainee Professional Development Award (TPDA) to attend the SfN 2018 Conference and present her work on prophylactic ketamine. In addition to research, Alessia also enjoys organizing events and activities for the Columbia Postdoctoral Society (CUPS) at Columbia University, as she was recently elected chair of networking and community building.
During her stay at the Italian Academy, she will focus on identifying the neural ensembles underlying fear generalization during development in a murine preclinical model. In particular, she will investigate the brain circuits underlying fear generalization through behavioral and whole brain imaging analysis.
For more publications: https://scholar.google.it/citations?hl=en&user=_1zeWiIAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate