Mavi Sanchez-Vives - Biography#

Maria V. Sanchez-Vives, M.D., PhD in Neuroscience, has been ICREA Research Professor at IDIBAPS in Barcelona since 2008, where she leads the Systems Neuroscience team. She is also co-Director of the Event Lab (Experimental Virtual Environments in Neuroscience and Technology). After obtaining her doctorate from the University of Alicante (1992), she was a postdoctoral researcher at Rockefeller University (1993 - 1994) and postdoc and Research Associate at Yale University (1995 - 2000). She established her own laboratory at the Instituto de Neurociencias de Alicante (Universidad Miguel Hernández UMH-Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas) with a permanent position (civil servant) as (Profesora Titular) Associate Professor of Physiology (2000 - 2007) at the Faculty of Medicine (UMH).

Her research interests are the neuronal and network properties determining the emergent activity in the cerebral cortex. Brain states and rhythms: regulating mechanisms, information encoding, neuromodulation.Using experimental and computational approach, with an interest in neurotechnology. The integration of the cortical information giving rise to bodily representation, combining brain activity and virtual reality for understanding these processes and VR medical applications. In these areas, MVSV has published 190 scientific papers.

She has received several competitive awards: pre and postdoctoral FPI fellowships, NATO postdoctoral fellowship, American Epilepsy Foundation, Human Frontiers Science Foundation Grant Program. She has also been a partner of 12 European projects, coordinator of five of them (CORTICONIC; SLOW-Dyn, VRperGENERE, META-BRAIN, XR-PAIN). MVSV has been partner of the Human Brain Project and the Graphene Flagships, being a member of the “Science and Infrastructure Board” of the Human Brain Project and Coordinator of a Workpackage “Networks underlying cognition and consciousness”. Currently she is recipient of an ERC SyG grant (2023-2029) and coordinator of the EIC project META-BRAIN.

She has given over 350 invited talks, plenary talks, seminars, symposia and workshops and has supervised 30 doctoral theses.

Co-author of 4 patent applications (2 active) and co-founder of the company Kiin (kiin.tech)

Active in outreach activities, she has organized series of conferences for the general public, participated on radio and television programs and in science documentaries.

Full CV