User talk: The 5M-Connectome Dataset: Multimodal Mapping of the Human Brain for Individualized Brain Modeling

Alessandra Bertoldo is Full Professor of Bioengineering in the Department of Information Engineering at the University of Padua, Italy. Since 2022, she has served as Director of the Padova Neuroscience Center, a research institute of the University of Padova dedicated to understanding the structural and functional organization of the brain across multiple spatial and temporal scales. She is also a member of the Board of the Doctoral School in Neuroscience at the Padova Neuroscience Center. Prof. Bertoldo has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed publications. Her work sits at the intersection of engineering, mathematics, and neuroscience, with a strong translational focus. She develops rigorous quantitative models to interpret brain imaging data, aiming to improve the understanding of neurological diseases — such as brain tumors — and ultimately support clinical decision-making. Through multimodal connectomics, she seeks to map and model the brain’s complex networks — metabolic, functional, and structural — to uncover how they reorganize in pathology and how they may be modulated. Her research is driven by the ambition to build quantitative and mechanistic representations of how the brain operates as an integrated system. Over the course of her career, she has contributed to several national and international research projects.