My career started with a degree in physics, followed by a master's degree in biophysics at Sapienza University in Rome, which included an internship at University College London. Upon graduation, I obtained a PhD scholarship at Sapienza to study diffusion dynamics in complex biological media. This was followed by a postdoc at CUBRIC, Cardiff, supported by the EU CONNECT Consortium, during which I specialised in white matter imaging under the supervision of Prof. D.K. Jones. Subsequently, I obtained the prestigious Sir Henry Wellcome Fellowship, which allowed me to develop my own project at the best facilities in Europe (Tel Aviv University with Prof. Y. Assaf and Maastricht University with Prof. A. Roebroek), where I proposed a strategy to characterise water dynamics in the white matter. I designed an innovative application in the field of addiction; my ADDICT project was awarded the 2016 NARSAD Young Investigator award from the Brain and Behavior Foundation. This grant allowed me to join the Instituto de Neurociencias de Alicante (IN) as a junior researcher, under the mentorship of Prof. S. Canals. In 2018, I started at the IN an ambitious project, funded by the EU through a Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant, to develop microstructure biomarkers in the grey matter. In 2019, I received the SEJI grant from the Generalitat Valenciana for the development and application of imaging techniques for neuroinflammation in ageing and diseases. In 2021, I was awarded a CIDEGENT contract from the Generalitat Valenciana and selected for a Ramón y Cajal contract, which I had to reject due to incompatibility. Thanks to this, I have set up the "Translational Imaging Biomarkers" laboratory at the IN, whose objectives are the development, optimisation and application of innovative, non-invasive and translational resonance imaging tools. At the IN, I am coordinator of the Translational Unit and member of the PhD commission in Neurosciences.
Contributions: With 13 years of experience in neuroscience, I have managed to build a solid international reputation. I have published 1 book chapter and 31 articles (22 first/ 4 senior/ 15 corresponding; h-index 20, >1500 citations according to Google Scholar). A significant part of my output is independent of my supervisors. I have given >50 international presentations and organised a SENC workshop. I have contributed as a guest editor to the journal Neuroscience (vol 403, 2019). I am editor of the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience. I do review work for high impact journals (e.g. Brain, Nat Comm, Science Advances) and for prestigious funding bodies such as the Wellcome trust, the Spanish Ministry of Health and the Spanish National Research Agency. I am a member of the access committee of the ICTS Distributed Biomedical Imaging Network. I received a grant from the Scientific Unit for Business Innovation of the IN to commercialise our production. Internationalisation: I have ongoing collaborations (all with papers) with researchers in Maastricht, Cardiff, the Policlinico Tor Vergata in Rome, Mannheim, and a close collaboration with the Multiple Sclerosis group at Harvard Medical School, Boston. Leadership: I have been awarded 9 competitive projects as principal investigator in UK, Spanish, US and European calls, totalling €1.6M. Teaching: In addition to being invited speaker in several advanced courses (e.g., "White matter imaging" of the ISMRM, “MRI quality controls” for the Italian Association of Medical Physicists), since 2016, I teach theory and application of magnetic resonance imaging in the master's degree in Neuroscience at the IN. Thesis: I have been co-director of 2 master theses and director of 1; currently I am director of 3 theses and co-director of 1. Outreach: I have organised art exhibitions dedicated to neuroscience (the last one at the Brain Week 2020). My Marie Curie project "MRI-STRUCTURE" was selected to be presented at the European Research and Innovation Days 2019. I have been an invited speaker at Pint of Science 2022. I have written several outreach articles (e.g. in The Conversation). Press coverage: The JAMA Psychiatry paper got national and international coverage with more than 70 articles/interviews on radio, TV (including the 21:00 RTVE news) and newspapers, and was included by the EFE agency in the 12 best research papers of 2019. Both my two Science Advances articles and the Neurobiology of ageing article appeared in the press and on radio. Awards: In 2014 I received the prestigious ISMRM Junior Fellowship. One of my figures was selected as the cover of NeuroImage. In 2016 I received the NARSAD Young Investigator Award. In 2019 I received the Trainee Professional Development Award from the Society for Neuroscience. My profile was selected by CSIC to appear on Academia-net.org, an initiative containing profiles of outstanding women scientists.