Mattia Chini.

Mattia Chini

Principal investigator
GIGA Neurosciences, University of Liège

Mattia Chini is a principal investigator at GIGA Neurosciences at the University of Liège. His lab studies how neural activity emerges during early brain development, and how developmental programs and sensory experience shape circuits and behavior. The lab pursues these questions through a combination of in-vivo electrophysiology and neural network modeling. A second line of research examines how analytical and conceptual choices influence results in systems neuroscience, through collaborative meta-science projects.

After earning an M.D. at the University of Padova and spending a year at the Center for Sleep and Consciousness at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Chini earned his Ph.D. at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, in the lab of Ileana Hanganu-Opatz. He subsequently remained there as a postdoctoral researcher and team leader, and he still holds an affiliation at the university.

Explore more from The Transmitter

Fruit flies use memory to track odors

When flies encounter a tasty smell, they stroll in and out of the odor plume—a process that depends on encoding a memory of the angle needed to travel back to the plume, according to a new study.

By Calli McMurray
8 September 2026 | 2 min watch
Map of genome variation.

New methods to contextualize autism-linked genes, and more

Here is a roundup of autism-related news and research spotted around the web for the week of 7 September.

By Jill Adams
8 September 2026 | 2 min read
Illustration of folded origami.

Dimensionality—neuroscience’s red herring?

Placing too much emphasis on a specific interpretation of dimensionality, or treating it as an end-all quantification of some aspect of neural computation, may hinder progress in understanding the brain.

By Matthew Perich
7 September 2026 | 8 min read