My research mainly focuses on a better understanding of the functional and structural neuroarchitecture underlying speech and language processing in association with learning, training and expertise in several domains. Using different neuroimaging techniques, I examined the brain properties of professional simultaneous interpreters, and addressed cognitive and linguistic functions (e.g., lexical-semantic access, code-switching and cognitive control mechanisms) in multilingual individuals with different degrees of language expertise. Furthermore, I investigated the multifaceted relationships between music training and speech processing at different linguistic scales, and provided evidence for transfer effects in both perceptual and cognitive domains. A further aim of my research is to provide insights into the perceptual, cognitive and neural mechanisms involved in word and language learning.

In the year 2010, I obtained my doctoral degree in cognitive neuroscience at the Department of Neuropsychology (UZH) where until 2022 I was chief assistant at the laboratory of Professor Lutz Jäncke and responsible for the auditory research group. Furthermore, in the year 2017 I worked as a visiting senior researcher in the Cognition and Brain Plasticity group of Professor Antoni Rodriguez-Fornells in Barcelona. In the year 2022, I moved to the Computational Neuroscience of Speech & Hearing group headed by Professor Nathalie Giroud at the Department of Computational Linguistics.