About me: Introduction

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Few words about me

Well, nothing has been linear, straightforward, or "as planned" in my life, but I surely cannot complain. When I was young I wanted to be a farmer, so I decided to take a BA in Agriculture at the University of Pisa. When that didn't work out as I hoped, I got depressed, took some time off, and then decided to take a self-medicating BA in Psychology the University of Padua.

It was not easy to find a job as a psychologist, so I ended up getting a Ph. D. in Cognitive and Experimental Psychology at the University of Padua, under the supervision of my beloved professor Carlo Umiltà and my friend Franca Stablum.

In 1994, when I was still a Ph.D. student at the University of Padua, I went to Eugene, Oregon, for a year as an exchange student at the Department of Psychology of the University of Oregon (Go Ducks!). I ended up staying there four years, from 1994 to 1998.

In Eugene, I worked with Steve Keele and Michael Posner. While I was there I also managed to meet, fall in love, and marry my husband Scott. In October 1998 I moved to Philadelphia, to work with brain injury patients at the Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute. I worked at Moss until July 2000, collaborating with some great people such as Laurel Buxbaum, Myrna Schwartz, Branch Coslett, and John Whyte.

My research focused on how our attention and memory influence the control of action. I've worked with both behavioral data and high density Event Related Potentials (ERPs) in "normals" (e.g., college students) and patients who have suffered brain injury.

While I was at Moss I became interested in the application of concepts and methods of cognitive psychology to the field of human-computer interaction and usability engineering. After a lot of reading and 50 job applications, in August 2000 I was hired as a usability engineer by the Vanguard Group. In April 2002, I become the manager of the Web Usability Team at Vanguard.

Professional Information

If you are interested in learning more about my professional life, feel free to look at my Academic Vita, where you can find the complete list of my publications and more details on my research or at my Professional Resume, if you are interested in learning more on the work I have done in usability.

Personal Stuff

Finally, for friends and family, some information about my latest passions and accomplishments, and some recent and less recent pictures, or my blog.