LILA Gianni | TRAINEE
Lila (Annagiulia Penelope) Gianni graduated in 2024 from Maastricht University in Science and Liberal Arts, with a focus on Neuroscience and Programming. Throughout their bachelor's degree, they participated actively in the community as student chair of the education programme committee, which was tasked with ensuring good education quality and resolving conflicts between students and professors. On an academic front, Lila forwarded their knowledge with an internship at MaCSBio, analysing data collected from several universities involved in a dementia study. During the academic project periods they highlight RoBotany, the design and construction of a fully automated plant-caring robot capable of identifying specimens and catering to their exact needs by modifying their environment (light exposure, moisture level, etc.). Lila also wishes to highlight a project regarding perceived and actual cognitive differences when presenting in front of an audience and with VR, which was accomplished during their last year in the bachelor's. Their bachelor research thesis was on the subject of the effect of cueing on gait at the Maastricht UMC with Tjeerd Boonstra. It analysed how an individual’s gait would be impacted via auditory cueing. This was done using the CAREN environment to fully control an individual’s environment using the treadmills, platform, and screen. Participants were equipped with a safety harness, a Bluetooth EEG cap, leg EMG, and motion sensors the system could capture to virtually replicate each individual’s movement.
Currently, Lila is pursuing their research master’s degree in cognitive neuroscience at Radboud University and is part of track 3: lifelong development and plasticity. They are simultaneously part of the CNS programme journal as part of the layout team. The CNS Journal is an internal unofficial journal which shares the chosen thesis from the CNS master programme each year. They began working on their master's thesis under the supervision of Helena Olraun. They will be studying the effect of dopamine on the basal ganglia, in the context of working memory, using 7T laminar fMRI.