ABOUT ME
I am a Swiss-Afghan, born in Rome, I did my Ph.D. between the Polytechnique of Lausanne and Duke University (Durham, NC), and my postdoc in Brazil. I am fluent in French, Portuguese, Italian, English, and Farsi.
MY WORK
My goal is to understand how to improve the life of people with spinal cord injury. I consider the multi-facet aspect of the injury: physical, neurological, psychological.
My research covers brain-machine interfaces, neuroprosthetics, and neurorehabilitation.
In the last 5 years, I have been in charge of the integration of brain-machine interfaces in the neurorehabilitation protocol for patients diagnosed with chronic complete spinal cord injury.
Working with the patients on daily basis and seeing the neurological improvements has been one of the most rewarding experiences in my life.
Science will disappoint you, until it doesn’t | TEDxLuzern
I was asked to comment on the current situation and what it means to be a scientist in 2020.
I did not feel comfortable explaining that 'science will save us', nor the anecdote about that day where 'I - suddenly - found the solution for X'; because we know it never happens that way...
I believe that curiosity and resilience are among the most fundamental aspects of the life of a scientist, and I tried to illustrate it. I wanted to communicate my passion for science and how it resonates during the bizarre/complicated period we are going through. Hope you like it :-)
AWARDS
Nov 2011
SOCIETY FOR NEUROSCIENCE
Poster selected as 'Hot topic' of the year at Society for Neuroscience, Washington, DC.
Social interaction probed by reaching to face images: Rhesus monkeys consider a textured monkey avatar as a conspecific.
June 2014
EPFL DOCTORATE SPECIAL DISTINCTION
Ph.D. Dissertation obtained special jury mention, Lausanne
Virtual reality-based brain-machine-interface for sensorimotor and social experiments with primates. EPFL doctorate special distinction.
2019
TOP 100 SCIENTIFIC REPORTS ARTICLE
The article Non-invasive, Brain-controlled Functional Electrical Stimulation for Locomotion Rehabilitation in Individuals with Paraplegia placed as one of the top 100 downloaded papers (over 19'871 papers ) for Scientific Reports in 2019.
2016
TOP 100 SCIENTIFIC REPORTS ARTICLE
The article ‘Long-Term Training with a Brain-Machine Interface-Based Gait Protocol Induces Partial Neurological Recovery in Paraplegic Patients’ place as one of the top 100 read Scientific Reports articles in 2016 (over more than 20'000 published papers).
Sep 2019
BCI AWARD - NOMINATED
Paper nominated for BCI award, Graz University
The Walk Again Neurorehabilitation Protocol: a BMI-based clinical application to induce partial neurological recovery in spinal cord injury patients