Monica Gori is a tenured senior scientist at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), where she leads the Unit for Visually Impaired People (U-VIP) laboratory. Her lab comprises 23 scientists (8 Ph.D., 7 PostDocs, 1 Technician, 5 Affiliated Researchers). Monica Gori is an expert on development, multisensory integration, visual disability, and spatial perception. She graduated in psychology from the University of Florence in 2004
(cum laude). She received her Ph.D. degree in Humanoid Technologies from the University of Genoa and IIT in 2009. From 2002 to 2006 she worked at the CNR of Pisa in David Burr’s Laboratory. In 2008 she worked in Martin Banks lab (Berkeley, California). During her Ph.D. she interacted with a strong multidisciplinary environment starting collaborations with engineers and clinical institutes (e.g. Chiossone Institute and Stella Maris Institute). During this period, she started important collaborations with prof. Juergen Konczac (Minnesota University, USA) and with prof. Melvin Goodale (Ontario University, Canada). Monica is a recipient of the European Research Council (ERC) starting grant MySpace 2021 (~€1.5 million, www.myspaceproject.eu ). She was the scientific coordinator of two large European grants, FP7 project ABBI (~€2 million, www.abbi.eu ) and Horizon-2020 project WeDraw (~€2.5 million, www.wedraw.eu ) and partner in two ITN H2020 Marie Curie project: MultiTouch and Optivist and Supervisor in the TIRESIA Horizon-2020 Global Marie Curie project. She has coordinated as a principal investigator of several technology transfer initiatives such as JOiiNT lab at Mondino research Hospital San Martino Research Hospital and is the author of a patent. She is a recipient of the TR35 Italian Innovation Award 2012 (price for young innovators), winner of the SmartCup in 2015, Finalist of the Engineering and Technology for the Falling Walls Science Breakthroughs of the Year 2021, recognized as "Expert" by Expertscape plans in 2021 ranked in the top1% of scholars writing about disabled persons in the past 10 years and listed in 100 Esperte in 2016 (woman in science). The impact of her work on the scientific community can be summarized by 130 international papers, 8 book chapters, and many conferences' abstracts. Internationally accepted indices of impact and productivity show that her work has received 2878 citations, leading me to an H-index of 26 (ORCID ID orcid.org/0000-0002-5616-865X; Scopus Research ID: 23491803400; ResearcherID: A-1238-2014). One of her works has been listed in the faculty of 1000 (Gori et al. Curr Biol, 2008). Two of her studies have been highlighted in editorial opinions, by Marc Ernst (Current Biology 2008) and by Andrew King (Brain 2014). In the last 15 years, Monica Gori studied human sensory neuroscience, particularly multisensory abilities, in children and adults with and without impairment. She used state-of-art neuroscience techniques, including psychophysics, computational modeling, evoked potential recordings. She applied the scientific findings to the development of new multisensory technological solutions for children and adults in the field of rehabilitation, learning and game. The research addresses most major themes of sensory interaction, including cross-modal calibration, child development, blindness, deafness, motor impairment, cortical reorganization, cortical plasticity, spatial perception and temporal perception. More recently, her research has expanded to include multisensory perception in infancy, the development of multisensory rehabilitative and supportive technology for early intervention, psychopathology disorders, sleep and adaptability of the developmental system
Lab activity:
Italian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGg0SB8rj1U
English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiSsDLUS_UQ
ERC MySpace: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8a5hUYubHVE
TEDx: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAz_Qx6xcRQ
WeDRAW Project: Exploiting the best sensory modality for learning arithmetic and geometrical concepts based on multisensory interactive Information and Communication Technologies and serious games http://www.wedraw.eu/
ABBI Project: Audio Bracelet for Blind Interactions https://www.abbiproject.eu/
MySpaceProject: www.myspaceproject.eu
