Sofia Pepe

Sofia Pepe is a PhD student in Behavioural Neuroscience at the Department of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome. Her master's thesis in Cognitive Neuroscience investigated the relationship between spatial short-term memory, working memory and temporal perception. She trained at Fondazione Santa Lucia IRCCS in Rome, working on the assessment and rehabilitation of children with neurodevelopmental disorders, and is a licensed psychologist registered with the Italian Board of Psychologists.

Her research focuses on the mnemonic and attentional components of travel planning — evaluating alternative sequences of actions to find the optimal trajectory to a destination, a task requiring complex cognitive processing and decision making (Martinet et al., 2011). She also studies the social and relational side of spatial cognition, the impact of social and spatial anxiety, and the influence of the vestibular system on navigation.

Award: the Guidoniani Prize

Sofia was awarded the Guidoniani Prize, the prize of the Italian Association of Aeronautical and Space Medicine (AIMAS) for research in aerospace medicine.