CogNovo fellow Ilaria Torre graduated on 21st September 2017, having obtained a PhD in Psychology, with research on "The impact of voice on trust attributions". Ilaria passed her viva on the 28th July 2017. External examiner Carolyn McGettigan and internal examiner Sue Denham deemed her thesis worthy of a PhD without the need for any corrections.
Ilaria also won a Marie Skłodowska Curie postdoctoral research fellowship within the EDGE programme, a Horizon 2020 programme that seeks to hire 71 postdocs in higher education institutions in Ireland, over two calls for applications. Ilaria's project, called "EMPATI: Emotion Perception Across MulTimodal Interaction" was selected among hundreds of proposals to be funded by the programme. Ilaria started her new position in Dublin on 1st October, and she will work with Dr. Naomi Harte in the Sigmedia lab, in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Trinity College Dublin for the next two years. In her project, she wants to investigate the effects of mismatched audio and video emotional stimuli on Human-Machine Interaction. Building on her PhD research, she aims at using novel methodologies to capture implicit measures of engagement and cooperation.