Team

Zeynep is a Master’s student in Neuroscience atthe University of Helsinki. She got her Bachelor’s degree in Molecular Biologyand Genetics at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey. Zeynep is interestedin the role neuronal oscillations play in perception and behaviour, and howthey relate to various physiological states. She enjoys dance, martial arts, poetry and philosophy.

During Flavio’s time in the NNCC lab, heanalyzed increases in EEG theta oscillations across the cerebral cortex duringnear-mistake events. He is a Master's student at Aalto University and is currently(Spring 2026) on exchange at EPFL. Flavio is also working as a researchassistant at the Oulu University Hospital as data analyst, and after hisexchange, he will continue as research assistant at Aalto University working inreinforcement learning for musculoskeletal simulation.

Caterina is a Master’s student in neuroscienceat the University of Helsinki, where she also completed her Bachelor’s degreein molecular biosciences. She is a part of the research group focused on locuscoereleus and the role it plays in cognition and behaviour. Her interestsinclude neurodevelopmental disorders and the different cognitive processes thatarise from them, with a broader focus on neural systems shaping behaviour.

Isabel did her Master’s thesis in the NNCC labin 2020 at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics inTübingen, Germany. She studied theeffects of environmental blue light on arousal,learning, and attentional set-shifting in rats. She earnedher Bachelor’sdegree in Psychology from the University of Lisbon andher Master’s inNeural and Behavioral Sciences from the University ofTübingen, where sheremained for her PhD, which concluded in 2026. Her PhD investigated thetemporal dynamics of human attention usingbehavioral andelectrophysiological methods.

Rayna is a Master’s student working onDrift-Diffusion modeling in decision dynamics. She got her bachelor's inComputer Science from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran and iscurrently studying master's in neuroscience at Aalto University. When she's notrunning an HSSM model, she's either making coffee, or playing with her cat.

Yasmine is a first year Master’s student in Neuroscience atAix-Marseille University, having earned her Bachelor’s in Life Sciences at theUniversity of Montpellier, France. 

Her first research experience at the MontpellierInstitute for Neurosciences (INM) focused on the FXYD protein and its role inchronic inflammatory pain.She is now an intern in the NNCC Lab at theUniversity of Helsinki, where she seeks to discover more about the field ofneuroscience and aims to pursue a PhD.

Sofia obtained her Bachelor's degree in Biology(Molecular and Health pathway) from the University of Urbino (Italy) in 2024with a thesis on the effects of berberine on neurodegenerative diseases. She iscurrently pursuing an international Master’s degree in Neuroscience at theUniversity of Trieste (Italy) and she is conducting an internship in the NNCCLab at the University of Helsinki as part of her training.

Frederike got her first introduction to Neuroscience in the lab of Steffen Katzner and Laura Busse (in Tübingen, Germany at the time), working with mice and visual behavior. This experience sparked her interest and motivated her to move to the lab of Pascal Fries for a PhD. Here she was one of two students to establish the common marmoset as an animal model for the lab and did some additional research involving rats. In the NNCC Lab Frederike is studying the circuit between prefrontal cortex and the subthalamic nucleus (STN) and its role in action selection.

Gabriel is a Chilean biologist and trained violinist who graduated from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. He completed his PhD in 2024 at the University of Sydney, focusing on the role of the Locus Coeruleus in large-scale dynamics. His research examines the role of neuromodulatory systems across human and animal models in both healthy and neurodegenerative conditions.

PhD student interested in cognitive control and decision making. Curious about life in general and how cells form a thinking and feeling individual.

Dmitrii is a senior PhD student. Psychologist and mathematician by training, he joined the lab in 2014 as an undergraduate assistant. His project is focused around neural correlates of cognitive control and changes of mind. An engineer in spirit, he contributed to development of the head-fixation paradigm in our lab, as well as flexible electrode implantation technique.

Joana is a doctoral researcher working on understanding the neural circuit for metacognitive control over visceral-emotional responses in rats. She got her Bachelor's in Biology in the Faculty of Sciences, University of Porto and her Master's in Neuroscience in the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki. In her work she combines electrophysiology, behavior, and autonomic measures to further comprehend brain-body connection in the context of metacognition. Joana's interests outside of work include drawing, painting, and playing tennis.

Amelien is a doctoral researcher studying locus coeruleus (LC) population activity and its role in cognition and behavior. She got her bachelor's in biology at the University of Hasselt and her master's in neuroscience at the University of Antwerp. She currently focuses on the development of ultra-flexible, ultra-thin (1µm) multi-electrode probes for deep brainstem recordings and studying the differential effect of atomoxetine on LC sub-population activity, their respective projection targets, and corresponding behavior.