Trevor Robbins
Trevor Robbins is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge and the Director of the Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute. His research integrates approaches from cognitive and behavioral neuroscience with psychopharmacology. In a multi-disciplinary research program involving both experimental animals and human patients, he has defined cognitive and behavioral functions of neural networks linking the frontal lobes to other regions of the brain, such as the striatum, in control of action and thought, as well as motivation. He has been especially interested in how chemical systems, including dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, and acetylcholine, mediate states such as mood and alertness to influence the functioning of these networks. He also has pursued possible drug treatments for cognitive enhancement in patients with psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders ranging from attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and schizophrenia to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.
Leona Polyanskaya
Leona Polyanskaya received her degree in Education and worked as a school teacher before she decided to go into research. She enrolled as a PhD student at Universität Bielefeld (Germany) and worked on reducing accentedness in second language speech by focusing on development of rhythmic patterns, prosody and temporal segmental characteristics, typical of the target language. After completing her doctoral degree, she received a research grant of 30.000€ from Rektort der Universität Bielefeld, as a PI at postdoctoral level, to develop applied aspects of her PhD project. In 2016, she received a Juan de la Cierva fellowship. In 2018, she received a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship and started a new research line on how bilingualism influences metacognition. Her current international network includes collaborators in Germany (Göttingen), Portugal (CIBIT), Saudi Arabia (Prince Sultan University, Riyadh), Mexico (Centro Regional de Educación Normal, Felipe Carrillo Puerto), China (Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, Hangzhou). She is currently leading active collaborative projects on metacognition and linguistic experience.
Paula Banca
Paula Banca is a cognitive neuroscientist with a background in clinical psychology who currently works at the University of Cambridge, UK. Her research is focused on the frontal lobes of the brain, their function, and their connections with other regions relevant to psychiatric disorders, particularly in the basal ganglia. Specifically, she aims to understand the neural mechanisms underlying action control processes, which are impaired in disorders of compulsivity. In 2017, she was awarded a Sir Henry Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Research Fellowship to develop her independent research programme in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). This fellowship enabled her the exceptional opportunity to work under the mentorship of Professor Trevor Robbins (University of Cambridge) and Professor Gitte Knudsen (University of Copenhagen). In the same year, she has also become a Fellow of the Hughes Hall College at the University of Cambridge. Before that, in 2015, Paula completed her PhD at the University of Coimbra, as part of the Doctoral Programme in Experimental Biology and Biomedicine, organized by the Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology, in Coimbra.
Pawel Tacikowski
Pawel Tacikowski is a cognitive neuroscientist and Assistant Investigator at the Coimbra Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Translational Research. Previously, he worked as an Assistant Project Scientist in the Cognitive Neurophysiology Laboratory at the University of California, Los Angeles, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Brain, Body, and Self Laboratory at the Karolinska Institute. Dr. Tacikowski’s research explores how the human brain constructs the sense of self and cognitive maps, with a focus on understanding these processes also in psychiatric and neurological disorders where they are disrupted. His approach combines advanced experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience techniques, including mixed-reality methods and single-neuron recordings in humans.
Rui Providência
Rui Providência is a medical doctor with specialization in cardiology and completed his PhD in the University of Coimbra. He received training in Cardiac Electrophysiology in Toulouse, France, and later in London, UK. He was appointed Consultant in Cardiology/Cardiac Electrophysiology in the Summer of 2017, and full Professor of Cardiovascular Epidemiology and Evidence Synthesis at the Institute of Health Informatics Research in 2023. Currently, he runs an Arrhythmia clinic at Newham University Hospital, and regularly performs catheter ablation procedures of all types of arrhythmias (atrial fibrillation, supraventricular arrhythmias, ventricular arrhythmias, etc.), and implant cardiac pacemakers, implantable cardiac defibrillators and cardiac resynchronisation therapy devices.
Vanessa Coelho-Santos
Vanessa Coelho-Santos is an Invited Auxiliary Researcher in CIBIT. Her work is focused on uncovering the mechanisms underlying neurogliovascular unit development and their implications for neurodevelopmental disorders. Vanessa has BSc in Biotechnology in 2009, followed by an MSc in Cellular and Molecular Biology in 2012. She obtained her PhD in Ageing and Chronic Disease from the University of Coimbra, Portugal, in 2018, supported by an Individual Doctoral Fellowship from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia. From September 2017 to February 2018, she was a visiting scientist at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) Health Medical Center in Charleston, USA, funded by a FLAD fellowship. Following this, in August 2018, she pursued her postdoctoral training at Seattle Children’s Research Institute and the University of Washington, with an American Heart Association Postdoctoral Fellowship. In December 2022, she commenced independent work funded by a La Caixa Junior Leader Fellowship and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Renato Duarte
Renato Duarte is a researcher at the Center for Neurosciences and Cell Biology, University of Coimbra, Portugal (CNC-UC), working in the domain of systems and computational neuroscience, under the thematic line "Neuroscience and Disease" at the Associate Laboratory CIBB - Center for Innovative Biomedicine and Biotechnology. After completing his doctoral degree in Computational Neuroscience from the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg and the University of Edinburgh with highest honors, he became a PostDoctoral researcher at the Institute for Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-6) and Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS-6), Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany. He later served as an Assistant Professor at the Radboud University, Nijmegen, and researcher at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior. His primary focus is on learning and memory in neocortical circuits, with a strong emphasis on synaptic plasticity and population dynamics.
Sérgio Nascimento
Sérgio Nascimento graduated in Physics and has a PhD in Colour Science. He teaches courses in Physics, Optics and Vision Sciences at Minho University. His research interests are colorimetry and colour vision, in particular, applications of multi and hiperspectral imaging, colour constancy and colour rendering, colour in art and models of colour vision. He is General Secretary of the International Colour Vision Society (ICVS).
Joana Cabral
Joana Cabral is a recognized researcher employing analytical and computational approaches to investigate the processes subserving brain function. Joana's research focuses on understanding the fundamental principles of brain function and their implications for psychiatric disorders. Her work has led to the development of large-scale brain models and the LEiDA algorithm, which identifies key features in whole-brain dynamics related to cognitive and behavioural conditions. Joana has made significant contributions to the field, receiving the 2019 L’Oréal Award for Women in Science Portugal. Currently, Joana is based at the Life and Health Sciences Research Institute of the University of Minho in Portugal and is funded by a Junior Leader Fellowship from La Caixa.
Antero Abrunhosa
Antero Abrunhosa is the director of the Institute for Neurosciences Applied to Health (ICNAS) since 2017. He started his path at the University of Coimbra (UC) in 1987 as a Biochemistry undergraduate student. Driven by his interest in research, especially its role in improving human health, he obtained a Master's degree in Biomedical Engineering and has never stopped exploring the potential of research ever since. In 2002 he obtained his PhD in Biomedical Sciences. Antero's research interests include development of targeted probes for molecular imaging, PET, SPECT, radiopharmaceutical development, PET Radiopharmacy and Quality Control, pre-clinical imaging, and clinical trials.
Marta Pais
Marta Pais has a MSc in Biomedical Engineering. After the course, she received a one-year scholarship as a Research Fellow at the Institute of Nuclear Sciences Applied to Health (ICNAS) of University of Coimbra to investigate the role of the visual and reward systems on Ayahuasca-induced spirituality. During her short scientific experience, she got the chance to learn more about molecular and functional neuroimaging acquisition, processing and data processing, as well as the flow of the data in clinical research. Currently, she is doing a PhD in Biomedical Engineering on a clinical PET/fMRI imaging study to investigate the role of dopaminergic neurotransmission in successful weight loss through bariatric surgery.
Barbara Sahakian
Barbara Sahakian is Professor of Clinical Neuropsychology in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Clare Hall. In 2024 she was awarded a CBE for services to Research in Human Cognitive Processes. She is a Fellow of both the British Academy and the Academy of Medical Sciences. She is the former president of the International Neuroethics Society and the British Association for Psychopharmacology. Sahakian has an international reputation in the fields of psychopharmacology, neuropsychology, and neuropsychiatry, including in ADHD, depression and Alzheimer's disease, neuroimaging and neuroethics. According to Research.com, with an h-index of 167, she is one of the very top researchers worldwide in the fields of neuroscience and psychology. She has over 590 publications in scientific journals, including Science, Nature and The Lancet. She has also been a leader in Government Policy on neuroscience and mental health, including on the UK Government Foresight Project and has spoken at the World Economic Forum in 2014, Davos. She is co- Inventor, with Trevor Robbins of the Cambridge Cognition CANTAB and EMOTICOM computerized cognitive tests which are used around the world. She is also co-inventor of the PEAK and PopReach Cognitive Training Games Wizard and Decoder.
