Ilaria was born and raised in Apulia (Puglia), a southern Italian region. She started her PhD at EPFL in 2021 under the supervision of Dimitri Van De Ville. Her research focuses on spinal cord fMRI and graph computational modelling. 

In 2017 Ilaria obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Bioengineering at University of Pavia working in Human Brain Project with Prof. D’Angelo and in 2020 she obtained her Master’s in Neuroengineering at EPFL, performing her Master thesis in Harvard Medical School as Bertarelli fellow for 12 months, where she worked in Lee lab on micro-scale graph connectivity in the cerebellum. 

Prior starting her PhD, she worked in Siemens Healthineers on automatic brain volumetry in the context of Alzheimer’s Disease and dementia. 

She is genuinely interested in the relation between structural and functional connectivity and has a big passion for graphs.

In parallel, she is a dancer: she competes at the national level in hip hop and teaches cuban salsa and bachata. In her free time she enjoys playing and composing music.