Dr. Elena Dreosti

Biography

Elena Dreosti graduated in 2006 with a first-class degree in Medical Biotechnology from the University of Trieste, Italy. She completed an internship in the lab of Enrico Cherubini at ISAS Trieste, where she discovered her passion for neuroscience research. She then moved to Cambridge, UK, to pursue her PhD studies under Leon Lagnado at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, focusing on the processing of visual stimuli in zebrafish. She developed genetically encoded calcium indicators, specifically SyGCaMP, to monitor synaptic activity. Dreosti was awarded the Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship, which afforded her opportunities to work in labs in Leuven, Belgium, and Lisbon, Portugal. During this time, she demonstrated that vertebrate brains exhibit functional asymmetries, with hemispheres processing information in ways analogous to human brains. In 2016, she established her independent research group as a Sir Henry Dale Fellow at UCL, emphasizing the use of zebrafish to study social behavior in health and disease. She also leads the Cajal Advanced Neuroscience Training Programme, where she developed the NeuroKits series, aimed at teaching neuroscience fundamentals through scalable, hands-on courses.

Research Interests

Experience