In 2013, Annalisa successfully completed a bachelor degree in Medicine and Surgery (University of Insubria, Italy), with the highest possible final score of 110/110 summa cum laude. After completing her medical training, she joined the Italian Medical Council (Ordine dei Medici) as a registered general doctor in 2014. in 2015 she moved to Australia to start her PhD in mammalian brain evolution at The University of Queensland. She graduated from her PhD in 2019 and went on to do postdoctoral research with Dr Patricio Opazo and A/Prof Victor Anggono at The Queensland Brain Institute. 

Annalisa is now a postdoctoral research fellow with us, and her work involves understanding how the different timing (heterochrony) of developmental processes in brain development can cause dramatic changes in the final brain structure, both in the context of evolution as well as disease. In her spare time Annalisa loves going to the beach, traveling and spending time with her family.

Twitter: @AnnalisaPaolino

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2117-2819

UQ Researchers: http://researchers.uq.edu.au/researcher/24690

Annalisa is part of the Suarez group which studies brain evolution and development, and the Fenlon Group which studies Cortical development, plasticity and evolution.

Researcher biography

I am a passionate neuroscientist, working as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the School of Biomedical Sciences (SBMS, UQ).

I have always had a deep interest in Medicine and Biology, which brought me to first successfully complete a bachelor degree in Medicine and Surgery in 2013 (University of Insubria, Italy), and then a PhD in Neuroscience in 2019 (Queensland Brain Institute, QBI, UQ). My PhD investigated how the connections of the cerebral cortex develop and evolve in different animal species, with a specific focus on the plasticity of these connections in health and disease.

During my first Postdoctoral experience in the laboratories of Dr Opazo and A/Prof Anggono (QBI, UQ), I worked on a project involving cutting-edge live-cell imaging using a two-photon microscope to investigate how key molecules are distributed in the brain during neuronal plasticity, both in vitro and in vivo, followed by behavioural assays.

Thanks to this experience, I gained unique surgical, behavioural, and imaging expertise that I am now employing to answer questions of brain evolution and development in the laboratories of Dr Fenlon and A/Prof Suárez at SBMS. In my current position I am investigating how the different timing (heterochrony) of developmental processes in brain development can cause dramatic changes in the final brain structure, both in the context of evolution as well as disease.