Silvia Casarotto2003 IEEE EMBS Award WinnerMy name is Silvia Casarotto. I was born in Pavia on Christmas Day in 1977 and I live in a little village near Milan, called Locate Triulzi. I attended a Scientific Liceo. I am still in contact with my old teachers and keep them informed of my research work. My favourite hobby is playing the piano, even if at present my studies do not leave much time to practice. At high school I liked studying mathematics and physics, but also biology and life sciences. For this reason, after obtaining the school-leaving certificate, I meant to study medicine. In that same year the Polytechnic of Milan was the first University in Italy to create a 5-years course on Biomedical Engineering. Enrolling in this faculty I reconciled the inclination for maths and physics with my interest in medical science. After learning the fundamentals in the basic scientific subjects, I focused on the signal processing and electronics applied to biological systems. For my degree thesis I had the opportunity to work on analysis of cognitive potentials for studying the reading-related cerebral mechanisms in children affected by developmental dyslexia. This very interesting project was made in cooperation with the Department of Child and Adolescent Neuropsychiatry at the Rho Hospital, an important centre for studying dyslexia in Italy. I obtained the degree in Biomedical Engineering in April 2002, with mark 97/100. In the following summer, the results of my thesis were presented by two posters at the 11th World Congress of Psychophysiology, that was held in Montreal (Canada). They dealt with "Principal Component Analysis for reduction of ocular artefacts in ERPs from normal and dyslexic children" and "Automatic measurement of ERPs in normal and dyslexic children by means of a non-linear alignment based on Dynamic Time Warping". After graduating, I went on to work in the research field. In March 2003 I obtained a scholarship to take up a PhD program in Bioengineering at the Polytechnic of Milan for working on "Integration of functional and anatomical data deriving from event-related potentials (ERPs) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) for studying the reading-related cerebral processes". This research project is partially supported by the Milan Order of Engineers. As well as working on this research project, during this first year of doctorate I attended some advanced courses at the University and some interesting schools. In June I attended the First European School on Neuroengineering 'Massimo Grattarola', that was held in Venice (Italy) and in September I attended the XXII Annual School of the Italian National Group of Bioengineering: bioengineering of posture and movement [Bioingegneria della postura e del movimento], that was held in Brixen (Italy). This last school was a useful chance to meet many other Italian biomedical engineers and to share experiences. Recently, the hard work I carried out has resulted in a paper entitled "Principal Component Analysis for reduction of ocular artefacts in event-related potentials of normal and dyslexic children" that will be published shortly in 'Clinical Neurophysiology'. I am soon to give an oral presentation of the same work at the XI National Congress of S. I. P. F. (Italian Society of Psychophysiology) that will be held in Pisa (Italy). Furthermore, I participated in several interesting conferences, such as the XX National Congress of S. I. N. P. I. A. (Italian Society of Child and Adolescent Neuropsychiatry), that was held in November-December 2003 in Rome (Italy) with the work "Neuropsychology of reading processes [Neuropsicologia dei processi di lettura]" and the 5th Conference of the Federation of the European Psychophysiology Societies, with the work "Reading-related potentials in dyslexic children" that was held in September in Bordeaux (France). I obtained great satisfaction from the 25th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, that was held in Cancun (Mexico) last September. In fact, I submitted the work "Dynamic Time Warping in the study of ERPs in dyslexic children" that was accepted and selected as a finalist of a Student Paper Competition. On that occasion I had the first opportunity to personally describe my work in an international conference and my performance was awarded with the third prize. It was a very nice experience that gives me the incentive to pursue my research and allows me to meet other researchers from all over the world.
Casarotto Silvia
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