Elena Itzcovich is a Scientific Program Manager at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, coordinating activities within the Brain and Machines flagship, which spans more than 30 research groups. Her role focuses on stakeholder alignment, milestone tracking, and facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration across neuroscientific, computational and engineering research teams.
She earned her PhD at the Graduate School of Systemic Neuroscience (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München), working at the Cognition and Neuronal Plasticity Lab of Anton Sirota. Her research focused on attractor dynamics in the entorhino-hippocampal circuit and electrophysiological correlates of Alzheimer’s disease in murine models. During her PhD, she co-organized and instructed an international methodology workshop in collaboration with UCLA, facilitated knowledge sharing through seminars and publications, developed advanced time-series analysis pipelines, and managed cross-functional collaboration between various groups.
Prior to joining IIT, Elena combined scientific expertise with technical and programmatic experience in engineering contexts. She has worked as a software engineer on international railway signaling projects, collaborating with multidisciplinary teams across countries. This blend of scientific, technical, and coordination experience supports her management of complex, distributed research programs at IIT.