After graduating from medical school and specializing in psychiatry (University of Genoa, Italy), I obtained my PhD degree in neuroscience (University of Genoa, Italy) and a postgraduate research master degree on affective neuroscience (Maastricht University, Netherlands). During the last years, I conducted my research work at the Department of Neuroscience of the University of Genoa (Italy) as a research fellow. I also spent several periods of training and research work at various international research centers as visiting researcher, including the Mind Brain Imaging and Neuroethics (University of Ottawa, Canada), Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (New York, U.S.), Research Center for Brain and Consciousness (Taipei Medical University, Taiwan), and Mental Health Centre and Psychiatric Laboratory (Sichuan University, Chengdu, China). Finally, I joined the Taipei Medical University as a medical researcher.

My research mainly focuses on the neurobiology of major psychiatric disorders, especially bipolar disorder.

I investigate the structural brain alterations in bipolar disorder, in particular microstructural white matter damages and how these are related to immunological changes.

Moreover, I study how such structural brain abnormalities are related to changes in the functional architecture of intrinsic brain activity and, in turn, how these may manifest in the manic and depressive symptomatology of bipolar disorder.

Finally, I am interested in a dimensional approach of psychiatric disorders, in order to detect the fundamental alterations in psychopathology that cut across the different clinical categories. This may help in the detection of more specific neurobiological alterations in psychiatric disorders and, potentially, to the implementation of more efficacious therapies. 

My research work is conducted in strict collaboration with Dr. Matteo Martino. We are currently working on these research lines and aiming to build a working model of the pathophysiology of bipolar disorder and its relationship with other major psychiatric disorders.

For more information on my ongoing projects, please see here. For the complete list of my published work, please see My Bibliography