Candida is a happy PhD student funded by the ERC grant and joined the Grubb lab in October 2017.
Her journey in neuroscience started in London after leaving Santa Maria del Cedro, an idyllic town on the cost of Southern Italy where too much peace did not suit Candida’s quest for exciting challenges.
In 2013 Candida started a BSc in Neuroscience at King’s College London. During her final year research project Candida joined the Grubb Lab where she looked at activity dependent plasticity at the axon initial segment (AIS) in dissociated hippocampal cultures.
Her enthusiasm for activity dependent plasticity brought her back to the Grubb Lab for a summer internship during which she was supervised by Matt and Adna, a science enthusiast Grubb Lab alumna. In these two intense months of cell culture, transfections, immunostaining, confocal imaging and analysis Candida looked at brevican expression levels at the AIS and AIS plasticity.
After her BSc Candida did an MSc in Clinical Neuroscience at UCL. There, she did her research project in the Chait Lab at the Ear Institute, using EEG in human subjects to investigate brain responses to regular versus random sound sequences.
With her PhD Candida is now looking at plasticity in adult-born olfactory bulb dopaminergic neurons using a variety of techniques ranging from stereotaxic injections of viral vectors, sensory manipulation, immunohistochemistry and electrophysiology.
When Candida gets some breaks from her busy PhD life she loves going back to her home town where she enjoys being surrounded by nature, paragliding over a beautiful landscape and dancing to the rhythm of pizzica. She needs to get this shot of fresh air and sunshine to get re-charged for the next challenge back in the Grubb Lab!
