Role
Full Professor of Neuropsychology and Cognitive Neuroscience at SISSA in Trieste, former Councilor and Vice President of ANVUR.
Bio
Raffaella Rumiati is a full professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at SISSA (International School for Advanced Studies) in Trieste, where she directs the Neuroscience and Society Laboratory. She graduated in Philosophy with a focus on Psychology from the University of Bologna and earned a PhD in Psychology from the same university, conducting research at the School of Psychology at the University of Birmingham. She has worked at SISSA since 1995 and served as vice president of ANVUR, the Italian National Agency for the Evaluation of the University System and Research, from 2015 to 2020.
Her research investigates the cognitive and neural bases of human behavior, with a particular focus on the relationships between perception, action, and cognition, food perception, and food choices. She also studies the cognitive and neural mechanisms of objectification, studying how people can be perceived and treated as objects. She studies cognitive reserve and the factors that contribute to the preservation of cognitive abilities in aging and neurological diseases. Another area of research concerns the role of cognitive and noncognitive factors in learning and academic achievement, with a particular interest in numerical skills and gender differences. She integrates behavioral and neuropsychological methods with neuroimaging, electrophysiology, and brain stimulation techniques.
She received the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Women in Cognitive Science Mentorship Award for supporting young female researchers. She combines her scientific work with a commitment to disseminating information and promoting debate on the relationship between neuroscience and society. Her most recent book is The Mind of Women (Laterza, 2026).