Senior Research Scientist
Head of Unit for Visually Impaired People (U-VIP) laboratory
Monica Gori is a tenured senior scientist at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), where she leads the Unit for Visually Impaired People (U-VIP) laboratory. Her lab comprises 12 Ph.D., 11 PostDocs, 1 Technician and 3 Affiliated Researchers. Monica Gori is an expert on development, multisensory integration, visual disability, and spatial perception.
She studied art at the Art Institute high school in Arezzo, then she graduated in psychology from the University of Florence in 2004 (cum laude). From 2002 to 2006 she worked at the CNR of Pisa in David Burr’s Laboratory. In 2008, she worked in Martin Banks lab (Berkeley, California). She received her Ph.D. degree in Humanoid Technologies from the University of Genoa and IIT in 2009 working with Giulio Sandini. During her Ph.D., she interacted with a robust multidisciplinary environment, starting collaborations with engineers and clinical institutes (e.g. Chiossone Institute and Stella Maris Institute). During this period, she started essential collaborations with Prof. Juergen Konczac (Minnesota University, USA) and Prof. Melvin Goodale (Ontario University, Canada). In 2013 she opened the visual-haptic lab within the Robotics Brain and Cognitive Science department and in 2015 she started the tenure track opening the U-VIP lab. In 2020, she became a tenured senior scientist.
Monica is a recipient of the European Research Council (ERC) starting grant MySpace 2021 (~€1.5 million, www.myspaceproject.eu ) and ERC PoC iReach. She was the scientific coordinator of two large European grants, FP7 project ABBI (~€2 million, www.abbi.eu ) and Horizon-2020 project WeDraw (~€2.5 million, www.wedraw.eu ) and co-coordinator of the PNRR Raise Project (Spoke 1, ~€20 million). She is a partner in two ITN H2020 Marie Curie projects: MultiTouch and Optivist and a supervisor in the TIRESIA and Flex-U Horizon-2020 Global Marie Curie projects. She has coordinated as a principal investigator of several technology transfer initiatives, such as JOiiNT lab at Mondino Research Hospital San Martino Research Hospital and is the author of a patent. One of her papers has been listed in the F1000. She is a recipient of the TR35 Italian Innovation Award 2012 (price for young innovators), winner of the SmartCup in 2015, Finalist of the Engineering and Technology for the Falling Walls Science Breakthroughs of the Year 2021, recognized as “Expert” by Expertscape plans in 2021 ranked in the top1% of scholars writing about disabled persons in the past 10 years and listed in 100 Experts in 2016 in woman in science. In 2023 she received the important “Cuore Digitale” award for social technology. The impact of her work on the scientific community comprises 180 international papers, 8 book chapters, and more than 300 conference abstracts. Internationally accepted indices of impact and productivity show that her work has received 4843 citations, leading her to an H-index of 26 in Scopus and a 33 in Google Scholar.