Enrico Varano is a postdoctoral researcher in the Neurolinguistics Division of the Psychology Institute, University of Zurich, where he is investigating multimodal language processes using behavioural and transcranial electrical stimulation paradigms.

Enrico’s joined from UZH from Imperial College London, Department of Bioengineering, where he had been pursuing a PhD in Sensory Neuroscience since 2018. Employing electroencephalography (EEG) and a variety of visual signals, he focused on the brain’s ability to integrate the audio and visual components of natural speech to overcome comprehension difficulties in noisy environments, and the neural mechanisms that underpin this skill. He also investigated how multimodal integration processes change with ageing and published a corpus of speech media specifically designed to enable reproducible and ecologically valid EEG studies in audio-visual speech comprehension and integration. By employing AI-generated talking head videos to improve speech-in-noise comprehension, he showed that findings in the field may be immediately applicable in the development of multimodal hearing prostheses. At Imperial College London, Enrico also worked with transcranial alternating current stimulation to investigate the neural processing of concurrent speakers.

Fun fact: Enrico’s research career began at the University of Bristol, where he worked on nano-reinforced polymer composites and from which he received his Bachelor’s degree in engineering in 2018.