Description

Throughout my Ph.D. studies and Postdoctoral Fellowships, my work had focused on unraveling the function of the cerebellum in health and disease, encompassing two research lines:

• Line-1. I have established that the modulation of cerebellar activity is essential for motor learning and helped to develop a computer model that reproduces experimental data and can predict motor impairments based on neural activity. Using intravital two-photon imaging, we discovered that granule cells acquire signals predictive of motor performance. This marked a paradigm shift in the understanding of cerebellar coding. We are working on incorporating those findings into our model. Furthermore, I have developed tools for monitoring neuronal activity that advance two-photon imaging

• Line-2. I investigated the role of the cerebellum in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We showed that cerebellar deficits are common in ASD. Recently, by disrupting cerebellar activity during different stages of development, we established a critical period during which specific cerebellar regions are crucial for non-motor behaviors. This work has been made possible by the VENI-ZonMw grant. In June 2018 I was awarded a VIDI-ZonMw grant to work on understanding the cerebello-cerebral networks underlying shared autistic traits.

I am deeply passionate and actively involved in science outreach activities. I was one of the organizers of the March for Science NL, which took place in Amsterdam in 2017. I am also an advocate for Open Access and data and code sharing.

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Expertise