The Transmitter’s Rising Stars of Neuroscience recognizes early-career researchers who have made outstanding scientific contributions to the field and demonstrated a commitment to mentoring and community-building.
This group comprises early-career researchers from multiple areas of the field—including computational, molecular and cognitive neuroscience—who strive to answer some of its most pressing questions. They’ve also founded mentorship groups, held leadership positions at neuroscience organizations, developed initiatives to translate basic science for wider audiences and more.
Dr Andrea Luppi is a Wellcome Early Career Research Fellow at University of Cambridge and a Research Fellow at St John’s College. Dr Luppi’s work examines how different drugs and conditions, such as the use of psychedelics or a comatose state, affect brain dynamics in mice, nonhuman primates and humans. His work in translational and computational neuroscience is already having an impact on the field. In a Nature Communications paper published in 2019, Luppi and his colleagues “pioneered the comparison of brain dynamics from anesthetised volunteers and comatose patients, to identify neural signatures of consciousness, an approach that is now widespread in the field,” says Bratislav Misic, associate professor at the Montreal Neurological Institute.
Luppi is also actively involved in science mentorship and outreach. He has published articles about the challenges early-career researchers in NeuroAI face and how to navigate life as a grad student, and served as a mentor for Project Access Italy, a nonprofit startup aimed at improving access to educational institutions for students from underrepresented backgrounds.
Featured paper: Contributions of network structure, chemoarchitecture and diagnostic categories to transitions between cognitive topographies. Nature Biomedical Engineering (2024)
Adapted from The Transmitter Neuroscience Report
Posted on 19/11/2025
