Valerio Zerbi got his masters degree in Biomedical Engineering (2008) at the Politecnico of Milano, Italy. Thereafter he moved to the Netherlands, where he successfully obtained a PhD in Medical Sciences (2013) at the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, as well as the diploma at the Donders Graduate School for Cognitive Neuroscience. In these years he became responsible for the small-animal MRI work in his research group, which led him on several international collaborations in the field of neuroscience. In 2014 he moved to Zurich, where he won the prestigious ETH Postdoctoral Fellowship award, to work in the Neural Control of Movement lab in collaboration with Prof. Wenderoth.

During his PhD, Dr. Zerbi pioneered several methodologies in the field of magnetic resonance neuroimaging to quantify the functionality of the brain in animal models of neurodegenerative disorders, e.g. by measuring cerebral blood volume and blood flow, grey and white matter structural proprieties via diffusion imaging, brain metabolism with proton and phosphorus MR spectroscopy, and lastly, functional brain connectivity during the resting-state. His main interest involves the development and application of MRI-based methodological deliverables to reveal best-practice protocols for quantification of brain function as well as testing new fundamental paradigms on the behaviour-to-neural activity correlation at the systems level. His current project involves the understanding of the neural processes involved in the control of autistic behaviour.