ALESSANDRO SANZENI
Courses a.y. 2023/2024
Courses previous a.y.
Biographical note
Since September 2022, I have been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computing Sciences at Bocconi University. Before joining Bocconi, I was a researcher at Columbia University, Duke University, and the National Institutes of Health. I was also a visiting researcher at the University of Chicago, the University of California San Diego, and the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Before doing research abroad, I studied theoretical physics at the University of Milan in Italy.
Research interests
My research is focused on tackling problems in neurobiology, by means of physical and mathematical modeling, with close relation to experimental data. The main questions I am interested in are:
What are the circuit mechanisms shaping representations of sensory stimuli in cortical circuits?
How are sensory representations modulated by body movement?
Which are the computational benefits provided by structural and dynamical properties of cortex?
Selected Publications
Emergence of Irregular Activity in Networks of Strongly Coupled Conductance-Based Neurons
Phys. Rev. X 12 (1 2022), p. 011044. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevX.12.011044., 2022
Mechanisms underlying reshuffling of visual responses by optogenetic stimulation in mice and monkeys
bioRxiv (2022). doi: 10.1101/2022.07.13.499597, 2022
Inhibition stabilization is a widespread property of cortical networks
Elife, 2020
Somatosensory neurons integrate the geometry of skin deformation and mechanotransduction channels to shape touch sensing
eLife 8 (2019), e43226. doi: 10.7554/eLife.43226, 2019
Tissue mechanics govern the rapidly adapting and symmetrical response to touch
PNAS, 2015