.: Sandi, Carmen

Present position

Carmen Sandi is Director of the Laboratory of Behavioral Genetics at the recently founded Brain Mind Institute, EPFL, in Lausanne, that she joined in 2003.

She did a PhD in Behavioral Neurobiology at the Cajal Institute, Madrid, and postdocs at the University of Bordeaux-INSERM and the Open University, UK. In 1996, she joined the Spanish UNED University where she leaded the Stress and Memory Research Group. In October 2003, after a sabbatical period at the Institute of Psychology in Bern University, she was recruited to the EPFL.

She was member of the Executive Committee of the European Brain and Behavior Society (EBBS) from 1999 till 2002. She has been member of Organizing and Program Committees for the organization of different Meetings, including the European Research Conferences (EURESCO, ESF) on "Neurobiology of Learning and Memory" (1998-2004); The ESF-Werner Gren Society Conference on "The perils and prospects of the new brain sciences" (Stockholm 2001); the 35th EBBS Annual General Meeting (Barcelona 2003); and ISPNE (2006) and PolySia (2007) Conferences. She is member of the editorial board of Neural Plasticity.

She has published over 70 peer-reviewed papers in international journals. She receives research support from the Swiss National Science Foundation, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, EU 6th Framework Program, and Roche Research Foundation.

Her laboratory currently deals with the following topics: (i) Understanding the contribution of stress to cognitive function; (ii) Elucidating the mechanism involved in the negative impact of chronic stress on brain function and cognition; and (iii) Searching for novel cognitive enhancers.