Profile

I have always loved science and literature. Biology was my favourite subject at school, which made me believe I would be a medical doctor. I was also fascinated with the brain despite its complexity and anonymity in a way. Later on, I was not sure whether the medical route was for me. After a long final year of confusion, I decided to study psychology because I loved the link between brain and behaviour.

Literature was my saviour, or a very good way of escaping reality quickly and efficiently. I often needed an escape because my hometown was very small and uneventful. During my escape moments, I enjoyed reading classics (e.g., Anna Karenina, Tom Sawyer) as well as modern classics (e.g., Klara and the Sun,  the Lord of the Rings).

Despite my good academic performance, I have always had to work much harder than my peers to achieve the same results due to dyslexic traits. Persistence and a bags of intrinsic motivation have helped me pull through.

Running and exercise have always been very helpful; as my concentration always improves after a good run.  Running is still my hobby.

My primary interests involve understanding the cognitive and neural mechanisms associated with mind wandering in individuals with neurodevelopmental conditions, and more recently the development of autistic and ADHD traits in individuals with genetic syndromes.

My working routine varies from day to day. I almost never do the same thing every day. Some days, I spent meeting people in person or online. During such meetings, we mainly talk about all the administrative work behind our research. The rest of our conversations are about science (the fun bit) 🙂

When I am not meeting people, I use my time to find relevant scientific articles to be able to make informed decisions about my own research. I often summarise these articles and make a list of all the new strategies/approaches we could use in our research.

When I am not reading articles, I often analyse data (up to 2000 participants sometimes). Data analysis are fun and exciting. We get to discover how people make sense of the world during everyday social interactions.

When I am not analysis data, I write scientific articles myself. The write-up process can be very tough and long. I must admit it, it is not my favourite.

When I am not dealing with data, I meet up with human participants for experimental work. This is the part of my job I love the most <3