DrFrancesca Troiani

Francesca Troiani received her BSc in Physics in 2011 (Thesis title: “Supernovae’s role in galactic evolution”) from University of Trieste, Italy. She was awarded a scholarship by the “Luciano Fonda” University College to attend her master degree at University of Trieste. During these two years, her studies focused on nuclear and medical physics and she developed a keen interest on brain. For her MSc project she decided to join a group of physicists at SISSA (International School for Advanced Studies) to work on a computational model for grid cells. She received her MSc (cum Laude) on September 2013. After graduation she was awarded a six months postgraduate fellowship from SISSA to continue her work on the formation of spatial representations on hyperbolic surfaces. Francesca has joined the Next Generation Neural Interfaces (NGNI) group at the Centre for Bio-inspired Technology as a PhD candidate in August 2014 under the supervision of Dr Timothy Constandinou, graduating in 2018 with a thesis on "Time domain optical coherence tomography for compound action potential recording: computational analysis and system requirements".

As of January 2019, she is a Research Associate at NGNI funded through an EPSRC Doctoral Prize award and an EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account.

She is also responsible for public engagement activities at NGNI lab and has developed activities for the Great Exhibition Road Festival, Friends of Imperial visits, worked on an engagement-through art project (Hatton Gallery January-June 2020) and is co-lead in the development of the NGNI stand at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition 2021.
Public Engagement Activities

STEM activity leader at Wohl Reach Out Lab (ongoing)
Friends of Imperial - Behind the scenes (Bessemer Building 25th January 2017).
Great Exhibition Road Festival (29-30 June 2019)
Out of the blue - engagement through art (Hatton Gallery January-May 2020)
Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition 2020 (July 2020)
Media
Francesca Troiani discusses using light beams to detect neural activity in peripheral nerves and the possible applications of optical coherence tomography to non invasive neural recording.