Postdoctoral researcher in visual cognition x ecology and evolution. Also learning to engage in and promote a better science: open, inclusive, accessible; slow.

Teaching

Guest lectures

  • Advanced topics in courtship behaviour and sexual selection (2024, 2025) for MSc students in Cognition, Behaviour, and Neurobiology - Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, Austria.

  • “Using Machine Learning to investigate communication signals in fish” (2023) for Undergraduate students in Biological Sciences - Department of Biological Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park, US.

  • “Deep Learning et al. Architecture and Applications in Biology” (2022) for Undergraduate students in Biological Sciences - Department of Biological Sciences, UMBC, US.

University teaching

  • Teaching staff (2026-2027) for VetMed students (first year) - VetMedUni, Vienna, Austria.
    Tutorial classes: Introduction to the scientific process, with a focus on sexual selection research.

  • Temporary teaching assistant (2019-2020) for BSc Psychology students (1st year) - Department of Psychology, Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, Toulouse, France.
    Tutorial classes: Introduction to Psychophysiology - Ontogenesis, Hormones in the human body, and Introduction to Genetics.

  • Graduate teaching assistant (2015-2018) for BSc Biology students (2nd and 3rd years) - Department of neuroscience and behavioural science, Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France.
    Practical works and tutorial classes: Nervous and cerebral functions, Behavioral ecology, Neurophysiology, Neuroscience

Outreach / Community projects

Replicards 🧬

Together with Elia Mascolo, we developed an interactive class for science teachers to teach biological evolution through a card game. In the activity, students are led to rediscover how replicants can inherit mutations and undergo evolution by natural selection if the inheritable characteristics can affect their reproductive success.
We made the content publicly available and freely re-usable on this website and have also shared it as a preprint.

Replicards logo

Magazine Perspectives 📖

Since 2020, I have been involved in the content creation of the magazine “Perspectives” for Fresco, a French national organisation involved in popularising cognitive sciences, while targeting diverse audiences.
I coordinated a thematic issue on altruism in animals for the first issue and am currently an editor for the second issue.
You can access the first issue here (in French): [Numero 1] and our second issue should be out in the Fall 2026!

Science communication 🤓

  • Coordination of the Fusani group’s participation in the 2026 edition of the Austrian Long Night of Research. We were a total of 12 researchers animating different activities for all ages. We had two research stations to show our respective research topics: sexual selection (“how do animals choose their partners?” / “Wie wählen Tiere ihre Partner?”) 🐦🐠 and human impact on animal behaviour and physiology (“Welchen Einfluss können Menschen auf wilde Tiere haben?”) 🪶🐦🐊. We had a collective blast!
  • Scientific speed dating with groups of high school students in France (December 2023; February 2025) with the Declics association. The initiative is more or less similar to the US “Skype a scientist” initiative, which you can join even from outside the US as it is a virtual format 👩🏻‍💻.
  • Outreach project at UMBC (Spring and Fall 2023) to share with undergraduate and high school students the research on sexual selection in darters conducted in the DART lab.
  • I also regularly give talks at public events that prioritise significant interactions with the audience. For example, I talked about visual illusions for the Brain Awareness Week in Toulouse, Fance, or about animals that have 3D vision and what they use it for at the Science museum, also in Toulouse. More recently I gave a short talk on how to get a mate as a bird or a fish for the 4th Mallnitzer Days at the National park “Hohe Tauern”, Mallnitz, Austria.

Inclusivity and Diversity