Lucia Melloni, PhD

Research Professor
New York University
Research Group Leader
Max Planck Institute

Lucia Melloni leads the Neural Circuits, Consciousness, and Cognition Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt, and holds a position as Research Professor in the Department of Neurology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Melloni's research is pioneering in the field of consciousness, seeking to unravel the complexities of human experience—why and how we perceive the world in the ways that we do, the potential for modifying these experiences through learning, and the intersection of consciousness with cognitive processes such as attention, expectations, learning, and memory.

Melloni champions the principles of collaborative and open science, which are central to her research philosophy. With collaborators, she spearheads a novel project to advance scientific discoveries on the neural basis of conscious perception. This project unites for the first time scientists from complementary disciplines within a common framework of ‘adversarial collaboration’, with the common goal to arbitrate between established theories on consciousness. By combining multiple imaging and electrophysiology approaches in a rigorous, large-scale project, spanning multiple laboratories across the globe, it provides an example of a powerful and well-orchestrated inter-disciplinary project that aims to unravel the neural basis of consciousness and what makes us humans.