Dr Stefano Sandrone, Senior Teaching Fellow, Department of Brain Sciences

I enjoy mentoring the next generation of neuroscientists: respect, knowledge, enthusiasm and experience are essential in creating an excellent learning environment.” 

I am aItalian neuroscientist, a Senior Teaching Fellow and a Principal Investigator within the Computational, Cognitive and Clinical Neuroimaging Laboratory (C3NL).  Before joining the College, I was a Teaching Fellow at King’s College London, where I completed my PhD and a brief postdoc.   

I am a very social person with several interests, ranging from art exhibitions to football, from going to the Royal Opera House to travelling. All things I could not do during the lockdown, which I also spent away from my family.  

Therefore, I focused on designing and implementing educational innovations to promote positive values. For example, I wrote a Neuron paper explaining how to exploit active and distance learning to adapt neuroscience courses in a time of social distancing. I launched an Imperial-branded blog called Alumni Brains, with interviews featuring neuroscience alumni, aimed at creating a strong sense of belonging within the community. I chaired the weekly Virtual Brain Meetings, the online version of the Brain Meetings seminar series I started organising two years ago, featuring outstanding speakers from all over the world. I collected new student-led interviews with wonderful women in science within another Imperial-branded blog I edit, which is called NeurOn Topic: the interviews are particularly inspiring and will be published in the following months.  

During the lockdown, I have also won two educational awards: the President’s Award for Excellence in Education from Imperial and the A.B. Baker Teacher Recognition Award from the American Academy of Neurology, which represents more than 36,000 members globally. I enjoy mentoring the next generation of neuroscientists: respect, knowledge, enthusiasm and experience are essential in creating an excellent learning environment.