Carmen Sandi

Research and career

Sandi worked as a Research Associate at her alma mater (Cajal Institute; 1993–95), before joining faculty as an Associate Professor Tenured at UNED University, Madrid. She spent nearly a decade there (1996-2003) working on the relationship between fear conditioning and memory. After taking a year long sabbatical (2002–03) as a visiting professor at the University of Bern, Switzerland, she joined EPFL in Switzerland as a tenure track professor, and has been working there since. At the EPFL, Sandi is currently Full Professor and Director of the Laboratory of Behavioral Genetics. She was the director of the Brain Mind Institute from 2012–2019. She is founder and co-President of the Swiss Stress Network.

Currently, Sandi's lab investigates stress, the brain, and behaviour - namely the neurobiological mechanisms of how stress alters the brain in the context of cognition and social behaviours. Her interests have expanded beyond social dominance across multiple subjects and into coping mechanisms in depressive situations at the individual level. She has published over 190 papers, resulting in more than 12600 citations and an h-index of 64.

From 2010-2011 Sandi was president of the European Brain and Behaviour Society and she became president of the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies for the 2018–2020 term. In the same year, she also became co-director of the Swiss research network (National Centre of Competence in Research) on psychiatric disorders, "Synapsy". She also serves on the editorial boards of Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, Journal of Psychiatric Research, Neurobiology of Stress, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, eNeuro, Biological Psychiatry and Psychoneuroendocrinology.