Meet our team!

Stamatina Tzanoulinou has received her PhD from the EPFL at the laboratory of Prof. Carmen Sandi, working on early-life stress models with a focus on reward-related and social behaviors. She then proceeded to conduct postdoctoral research with Prof. Camilla Bellone, first at the University of Lausanne, and then moving at the University of Geneva. During this appointment, Stamatina combined her behavioral expertise with whole-cell patch clamp recordings and chemogenetic approaches in order to functionally interrogate synaptic properties in autism animal models with a focus on alterations of the mesolimbic dopamine pathway.

Stamatina continued her postdoctoral experience in the lab of Dr. Anne Vassalli focusing on the orexin-dopamine interplay in determining behavior.

After being awarded an SNF PRIMA grant, she started her lab in June 2023 at the Department of Biomedical Sciences atUniversity of Lausanne, studying the consequences of social trauma.

Lito obtained her BSc degree in Biology from the University of Crete (Greece), where she investigated the role of SATB1 protein in phase separation, using molecular biology techniques. Then, she received her MSc degree in Molecular Biology – Biomedicine from the University of Crete and the IMBB-FORTH. Adopting behavioral tests and imaging in transgenic mice, she studied the prefrontal cortical development upon neuronal autophagy impairment in adolescence.

During her MSc studies, she also moved to France for an internship at the Paris-Saclay Institute of Neuroscience, where she implemented behavioral tasks in rats to study pattern discrimination processes.

In 2023, she joined the Social brain physiology lab at the Department of Biomedical Sciences of the University of Lausanne, for a PhD in Neuroscience.
During her PhD, she will combine her behavioral expertise with chemogenetics and ex vivo electrophysiology to dissect behavioral alterations and the underlying brain
circuitry in the aftermath of trauma.

Pierre-Hugues initially studied in Paris Descartes university obtaining his master’s thesis under Brandon Stell testing early applications of all optical physiology in slices. He then did a long Phd in the lab of Albrecht Stroh at the Johannes Gutenberg university Mainz, establishing combinations optogenetics, calcium imaging and multi-site electrophysiological recordings in the barrel cortex of mice.

He also worked in establishing two-photon all-optical physiology in awake mice. Having an interest in microcircuits and mechanisms of anesthesia, he joined the laboratory of Mehdi Tafti to study the Pontine microcircuits of natural REM sleep.

Following this appointment, since December 2023, he has joined the labs of Prof. Paolicelli and Prof. Tzanoulinou where he studies neurobiology and behavior.

Corinne obtained her MS in Microbiology from the University of Lausanne. She then joined the group of Prof. Bernard Rossier at the Department of Pharmacology and
Toxicology at UNIL as a lab technician.

In 2004 she joined the Mehdi Tafti’s lab at the Center for Integrative Genomics.

Corinne has joined the group of Prof. Tzanoulinou since 2023.

Mattia obtained a BSc in Psychology with a minor in Neuroscience from the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) in 2018. During his bachelor studies, he collaborated with the Department of Neurosciences and Movement Science, investigating the effects of unilateral lesions in the primary motor cortex on the supplementary motor areas in macaque monkeys.

He then pursued an MSc in Neuroscience at the University of Geneva (Switzerland), which he obtained in 2021. During his time at the Department of Basic Neuroscience, he first focused on social behavior in mice, exploring the role of the insular cortex. He then transitioned to studying the role of dopamine on synaptic plasticity of glutamatergic afferents of the nucleus accumbens, utilizing ex vivo whole-cell patch-clamp electrophysiology.

Following his time in Geneva, he moved to Lausanne, where he worked as a Deputy Study Director at the Ophthalmic Hospital Jules-Gonin and later as a Clinical Trial Coordinator at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV). Currently, Mattia is a scientific collaborator at the Department of Biomedical Sciences of the University of Lausanne (Switzerland), where he applies his scientific expertise to support research on chronic social stress.

Chiara Bezzola obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Biology from the University of Lausanne. She is currently doing a Master’s degree in Medical Biology with a specialization in Neuroscience. She joined Tzanoulinou’s lab for her Master’s project, which aims to uncover how individual differences in anxiety and specific neural pathways contribute to social fear learning, a process highly relevant for understanding vulnerability to anxiety- and trauma-related disorders.