I graduated summa cum laude, at top grade (110/110), with a degree in Biology from the University of Cagliari in 2010 and focused my interests on human neuroscience. Throughout my career I integrated various neuroscientific techniques, including EEG and fMRI, and put forward novel hypotheses regarding human social cognition. Currently, I am investigating interventions for social impairments in health and disease. My Ph.D. thesis on neural correlates of sexual objectification was awarded the ¿AIP Best Thesis¿ prize by the Italian Association of Psychology, and the results have been published in peer-reviewed journals (including Cortex and Emotion & Cognition), presented at international conferences (e.g. CNS, APS, ESCAN, SANS, TeaP), and received widespread media attention (e.g. neurosciencenews.com, psychologicalscience.org, newswise.com, sexualdiversity.org, medicalxpress.com, sciencedaily.com, insider.com, alphagalileo.org, among others). My experiments demonstrated, for the first time, that empathy for pain and social exclusion depends on other¿s objectification, both at the behavioral and at the neural level (Cogoni et al., 2018, Cortex). These results were extended to the empathy for affective touch, using women acting as confederates, marking an important step toward development of ecologically valid stimuli in the field (Cogoni et al., 2020). Furthermore, I demonstrated that specific visual features of sexualized stimuli (such as the asymmetry) do have a moderating role on the recognition accuracy (Cogoni et al., 2018, Plos One). During my first postdoc at the University of Trento, I have conducted a set of EEG studies demonstrating that when objectified, the perception of women (vs. men) is more similar to objects (Vaes et al., 2019, Sci Rep), and further narrowed down the mechanisms behind categorization conflict between objectified people and objects (Vaes et al., 2019, SPPS). The novelty of these results allowed me to establish new international collaborations and influence the direction in which further research in this field is carried out, as we discuss in a recently published perspective (Bernard et al., 2020, Curr Dir). Investigating basic mechanisms of social cognition solidified my expertise as a social neuroscientist, and I have expanded my interests towards exploring potential interventions to improve social cognition in mental illness and beyond. This led me to accept my second postdoc position at the University of Lisbon in 2019. I coordinated and executed six interdisciplinary, cutting-edge projects focused on the neuroendocrine roots of social behavior. In particular, I combined neuropharmacology, genetics, and a range of psychophysiological data, including EEG, fMRI, pupillometry, electrocardiogram, electromyogram, and skin conductance response, to study the biological underpinnings of social cognition and its dysfunction in schizophrenia and healthy population. These work has allowed me to truly extend my skills in several psychophysiological techniques, and to 1st- and co-author a range of articles currently submitted or in preparation, while also supervising trainees, MSc and 2 PhD students on data collection and statistical analysis. To date, more than 32 students have been under my guidance. I was recently a Master Thesis Examiner. Several ongoing international collaborations can be mentioned: 1) University of Trieste (Italy), 2) University of Trento (Italy), 3) University of Vienna (Austria), 4) University of Bruxelles (Belgium), 5) New York University (USA), 6) Emory University (USA). My research is highly cited (313 citations overall), and its impact have been recognised in 2021, when I obtained a competitive grants with a Principle Investigator role (FCT, 50.000 euro). My independence is also growing trough: 1) serving as an editor and reviewer for peer-reviewed articles (~20); 2) being a member of IBEB's Scientific CouncilI; 3) organizing and participating in outreach activities.