Advisory Board and Editors Neuroscience

Journal Factsheet
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Giorgio Vallortigara

Giorgio Vallortigara is Professor of Neuroscience at the Centre for Mind/Brain Sciences at the University of Trento, Italy, and he has been an Adjunct Professor at the School of Biological, Biomedical and Molecular Sciences at the University of New England, Australia for several years.

He is the author of over 400 scientific papers (with more than 30,000 citations overall; h-index: 76 Scopus; 96 Google Scholar), most in the area of animal cognition and comparative neuroscience. He discovered the first evidence of functional brain asymmetry in the so-called “lower” vertebrate species (fish, amphibians); he also worked on comparative cognition, in particular on visual perception of biological motion, and spatial and number cognition.

He served in the editorial boards of several cognitive science and neuroscience journals, he was co-editor of the journal “Laterality: Asymmetries of Brain, Body and Cognition” and has been the recipient of several awards.

His major research interest is the study of cognition in a comparative and evolutionary perspective, with particular reference to the mechanisms underlying the use of geometry in spatial navigation and the origins of number and object cognition in the animal brain. He also studied extensively the evolution of the asymmetry of the brain.

Jaap H van Dieën

Jaap van Dieën worked as a researcher in physical ergonomics at the Institute for Agricultural Engineering in Wageningen, the Netherlands (1986 to 1996). He obtained a PhD from the Faculty of Human Movement Sciences at the VU University Amsterdam the Netherlands in 1993 and has been affiliated to this faculty since 1996. In 2002, he was appointed as full professor and became head of the department in 2016. Jaap van Dieën leads a research group focusing on the neuromechanics of human movement, with applications in ageing, musculoskeletal and movement disorders and sports. His research focuses on four themes:
1) Balance control: what determines good balance control, how we can assess balance control and fall risk, and how can balance control be improved?
2) Control of trunk posture and movement: how does trunk control change with disorders like low-back pain, and how can changes in trunk control be assessed clinically?
3) Spine mechanics and low-back pain: how can low-back loading be assessed, and how effective are ergonomic interventions in reducing low-back loading?
4) Measurement tools for biomechanical and neurophysiological assessment with a focus on applications outside the lab.

Jaap van Dieën has supervised over 50 PhD students and (co-) authored over 500 papers in international scientific journals. He is currently the editor of the Biomechanics and Control of Human Movement section of Frontiers in Sports and Active Living and serves on several editorial boards.

David Vauzour

Dr David VAUZOUR received his PhD from the University of Montpellier (France) in 2004. His research, based at the University of Reading (2005-2011), and at the Norwich Medical School, University of East Anglia, UK (2011- present), has focused on investigating the molecular mechanisms that underlie the accumulating body of epidemiological, and medical evidence, on a positive correlation between the consumption of diets rich in fruits and vegetables and a decreased risk of (neuro)degenerative disorders. In this context, his initial work provided considerable insights into the potential for natural products to promote human vascular function, decrease (neuro)inflammation, enhance memory, learning and neuro-cognitive performances and to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. His recent interests concern how phytochemicals modulate ApoE genotype-induced cardiovascular risk and neurodegenerative disorders and their underlying mechanisms. Dr Vauzour sits on the board committee of “Groupe Polyphenols” and is the Co-Chair of the ILSI Europe “Nutrition and Mental Performance Task Force“.

Natascia Ventura

Natascia Ventura received her MD and PhD degrees at the University of Rome and her post-doctoral training at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Since 2012 she leads the Mitochondrial-associated aging and diseases group and her research mainly uses C. elegans as a powerful genetic tractable organism to unravel mechanistic aspects of mitochondrial-stress control of longevity and to develop models for human mitochondrial-associated diseases.

Annamaria Vezzani

Head of Experimental Neurology, Department of Neuroscience, Mario Negri Institute. Associate Editor of Basic Science for Epilepsia. Former Chair of the Commission on Neurobiology of International League Against Epilepsy. Recipient of the Research Recognition Award for translational research in 2009 by the American Epilepsy Society.

Marcus Fraga Vieira

Prof. Marcus Vieira is the Bioengineering and Biomechanics Laboratory head at Universidade Federal de Goiás. He received BS in Electrical Engineering and Physical Education from the Universidade Federal de Goiás, and MSc and PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the Universidade de São Paulo. He focuses his research in computational neuroscience and biomechanics, especially in motoneuron modeling, spinal CPG, nonlinear tools for movement variability analysis, including entropy, fractal dimension and recurrence analysis, coherence analysis in postural control, transitory tasks such as gait initiation, and gait dynamic stability.

Alessandro M Viganò

Dr. Alessandro Viganò is a Neurologist at the Fondazione Don Gnocchi in Italy.

His areas of expertise include Headaches, Migraine, Severe Brain Injury, Strokes, Dysphagia, Focal Muscle Vibration.

Ramana Vinjamuri

Ramana Vinjamuri received his undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from Kakatiya University (India) in 2002. He received his MSc in Electrical Engineering from Villanova University in 2004, specializing in Bioinstrumentation. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from University of Pittsburgh in 2008, specializing in Dimensionality Reduction in Control and Coordination of the Human Hand. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow (2008-2012) in the field of Brain-Machine Interfaces (BMI) to control prosthesis in the School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh. He worked as a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University (2012-2013). He worked as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology (2013-2020). He was the recipient of the Harvey N Davis Distinguished Teaching Award in 2018 at Stevens. His research at Stevens was supported by Research and Innovation grants from the New Jersey Health Foundation. He received the NSF CAREER Award in 2019 and NSF IUCRC Planning Grant Award in 2020 respectively. He also holds a secondary appointment as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad, India. His research interests are in the areas of – brain-computer interfaces, neuroprosthetics and exoskeletons, machine learning, and signal processing.

Shibiao Wan

Dr. Shibiao Wan is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Genetics, Cell Biology and Anatomy, and the Co-Director for the Bioinformatics and Systems Biology (BISB) PhD Program at University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC). He is also an Assistant Professor (courtesy) in the Department of Biostatistics at UNMC.

With more than 15 years of experience in machine learning, bioinformatics, and computational biology, Dr. Wan has published >50 articles in top-tiered journals such as Genome Research, Nature Communications, Science Advances, Circulation Research, Briefings in Bioinformatics, and Bioinformatics. Dr. Wan is the Editor-in-Chief for Current Proteomics, and an Editorial Board Member for a series of prestigious journals such as Briefings in Functional Genomics, Heliyon, BMC Bioinformatics, International Journal of Microbiology, PeerJ Computer Science, BioMed Research International, and Computational and Mathematical Methods, and a guest associate editor for multiple high-impact journals including Frontiers in Immunology, Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology, Frontiers in Pharmacology, Biology, Frontiers in Genetics, and Genes.

Dr Wan is a TPC member for >20 machine learning related international conferences including IEEE ICTAI. Dr. Wan is also a reviewer for >70 prestigious journals including Nature Biotechnology, Nature Methods, Nature Communications, Nature Computational Science, Science Advances, Nucleic Acids Research, Advanced Science, Cancer Research, Genome Biology, and Genome Medicine. Dr. Wan has received a number of accolades including the Springer Nature Editor of Distinction Award in 2025 by Springer Nature, the New Investigator Award in 2024 by UNMC, the FIRST Award in 2023 by Nebraska EPSCoR, the Outstanding Young Alumni Award in 2022 by HK PolyU as well as the Global Peer Review Awards (top 1%) in “Cross-Field” and “Biology and Biochemistry” in 2019 by Clarivate. Dr. Wan is a member of AACR, ISCB and ACM and an IEEE Senior Member.

Jincheng Wang

Dr. Jincheng Wang is a research fellow at global center for Biomedical Science and Engineering, Hokkaido University Faculty of Medicine. Dr. Jincheng Wang worked as a hepatologist in Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital for 3 years. He published 29 articles and obtained more than 10 patents (https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9345-2388). His research interests are natural products, cancer treatment, radiomics, medical informatics and computational methods in personalized medicine.

Benjamin J. Whalley

Senior Lecturer in Pharmacology, University of Reading. British Neuroscience Association Local Group Representative. British Pharmacological Society (Member). UK Epilepsy Research Network (Interventions & Therapies CWG). Pharmacist (GPhC registered).

Investigating unmet clinical need in epilepsy with a specific focus on cannabinoid pharmacology using preclinical animal models and electrophysiological techniques supported by convention molecular and biochemical approaches.

Darren W Williams

Group Leader and Reader at King's College London. My research focuses on the mechanisms that control the assembly of neural networks. I have explored how network components are generated from distinct neural precursors, how axons and dendrites are guided to their targets and the way dendrites undergo large-scale pruning. Although my lab uses Drosophila, my experience with zebrafish and teaching human neuroanatomy to medical students broadly influences the questions I ask.