Carmen Sandi


Carmen Sandi is a Spanish and Swiss behavioral neuroscientist. She is a professor of neuroscience and director of the Laboratory of Behavioral Genetics at the Brain Mind Institute.
WWW people.epfl.ch/carmen.san...

Early life and education

Born and raised in Torrelavega, Spain, Sandi moved to Salamanca to obtain her BS and MS from the University of Salamanca in 1984 and further to Madrid for her PhD at the Cajal Institute and the Autonomous University of Madrid in 1988. She continued her postdoctoral research at INSERM, Bordeaux, France and Open University, UK.

Research and career

Sandi worked as a Research Associate at her alma mater, before joining faculty as an Associate Professor Tenured at UNED University, Madrid. She spent nearly a decade there working on the relationship between fear conditioning and memory. After taking a year long sabbatical as a visiting professor at the University of Bern, Switzerland, she joined EPFL in Switzerland as a tenure track professor, and has been working there since. At the EPFL, Sandi is currently Full Professor and Director of the Laboratory of Behavioral Genetics. She was the director of the Brain Mind Institute from 2012–2019. She is founder and co-President of the Swiss Stress Network.
Currently, Sandi's lab investigates stress, the brain, and behaviour - namely the neurobiological mechanisms of how stress alters the brain in the context of cognition and social behaviours. Her interests have expanded beyond social dominance across multiple subjects and into coping mechanisms in depressive situations at the individual level. She has published over 190 papers, resulting in more than 12600 citations and an h-index of 64.
From 2010-2011 Sandi was president of the European Brain and Behaviour Society and she became president of the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies for the 2018–2020 term. In the same year, she also became co-director of the Swiss research network on psychiatric disorders, "Synapsy". She also serves on the editorial boards of Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, Journal of Psychiatric Research, Neurobiology of Stress, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, eNeuro, Biological Psychiatry and Psychoneuroendocrinology.

Publications

  1. Sandi, C., Pinelo-Nava, M.T. Stress and Memory: Behavioral Effects and Neurobiological Mechanisms. Neural Plasticity. 2007; Article ID: 78970, .
  2. Sandi, C., Haller, J. Stress and the social brain: behavioural effects and neurobiological mechanisms. Nat Rev Neurosci 16, 290–304. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3918
  3. Sandi, C., Loscertales, M., Guaza, C. Experience-dependent facilitating effect of corticosterone on spatial memory formation in the water maze. European Journal of Neuroscience. 1997; 9: 637–642,
  4. Filiou, M.D., Sandi, C. Anxiety and Brain Mitochondria: A Bidirectional Crosstalk. Trends in Neurosciences. 2019; 42: 573–588,
  5. Hollis, F., Kooij, M.A., Zanoletti, O., et al. Mitochondrial Function in the Brain Links Anxiety With Social Subordination. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2015; 112: 15486–15491,
  6. Bacq, A., Astori, S., Gebara, E., et al. Amygdala GluN2B-NMDAR Dysfunction Is Critical in Abnormal Aggression of Neurodevelopmental Origin Induced by St8sia2 Deficiency. Molecular Psychiatry. 2018;,

Awards and honors