Irene joined the Allen Institute for Brain Science in 2020 to aid in research efforts studying the neuronal bases of consciousness. Irene earned her PhD. in Robotics, Cognition and Interaction Technologies from Italian Institute of Technology (Genova, Italy). There she worked on a project which used high density microelectrode array to decode electrocorticographic (ECoG) signals from different cortical areas of human patients undergoing brain surgery. As a visiting research student, she spent two years at University of Washington under the supervision of Dr. Eberhard Fetz and Dr. Stavros Zanos working on a project which studied cortical plasticity induced in-vivo. The aim of the project was to use an implantable recurrent brain-computer interface to deliver activity-dependent stimulation. She joined Fetz’s lab as a postdoc in 2016 where she worked on a project on the use of vagus nerve stimulation to augment targeted neuroplasticity and enhance cognitive performance. Irene earned her master degree in neroengineering and her B.S. in biomedical engineering from University of Genoa, Italy.