P.I. - PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Raffaella Rumiati is Full Professor of Cognitive Nerusocience at SISSA. She graduated with a Master's degree in philosophy, with a psychology curriculum, and obtained a PhD in psychology from the University of Bologna, Italy, while doing her research towards the PhD thesis at the School of Psychology of Birmingham University, UK.

Her scientific publication record counts more than 100 peer reviewed publications on cognitive neuroscientific topics, but she is also been publishing in newspapers and magazines (pee es., Il Sole 24 Ore, La Stampa, Pagine Ebraiche, Il Piccolo, Sapere, Mente e Cervello).

She is a member of the Editorial board of the peer reviewed journal “Cognitive Neuropsychology”, an Action Editor for “Brian and Cognition” and serves as ad hoc reviewer for many international journals within the cognitive neurosciences. She gave about 70 talks as an invited speaker in Italy and abroad. She is a member of the steering committee of the European Workshop on Cognitive Neuropsychology (http://bressanone.dur.ac.uk/).

She spent several research visiting periods at the London National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery (London, UK), at the Max Planck Institute for Psychology in Munich, Germany, at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot (Israel), and a year at the Forschungszentrum (FSZ, Jülich, Germany). She is visiting scientist at the Laboratory for Symbolic Cognitive Development, Intellectual Brain Function Research Group of the Brain Science Institute of RIKEN, Japan.

In 2003, she received the Bessel Prize (von HumboldtStiftung) and in 2006 the Women in Cognitive Science Mentorship Award for her support to female young investigator. In 2013 the Comune di Piacenza awarded her with the  “Premio Pulcheria”.

P.I. - Brief summary of my research interests

She has spent many years studying language, memory, perception and action in healthy and brain-damaged people.

In recent years she has developed a new research programme with two main strands:

• The first aims to identify the cognitive and non-cognitive factors, such as anxiety and personality, that influence the educational attainment of university students and their neurophysiological correlates, with a particular focus on numeracy.
• The second strand concerns the neuroscientific characterization of the construct of cognitive reserve to account for individual differences in normal and pathological ageing, as well as in individuals affected by other neurological pathologies.