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Chairs and Organizers


General Chair 

Alice Chirico
Assistant Professor

Catholic University of the Sacred Heart                

Brief Bio

Assistant Professor (M-PSI/01, ssd E11-1) at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan (Italy), lecturer of the course “Psychotechnologies for wellbeing” and “Creativity and Design Thinking”. Scientific Senior Member of the Center of Study and Research in Communication Psychology. Director of the Experience Lab and of the Research Unit of Psychology of Music at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan. Advanced researcher at the Applied Technology for Neuropsychology lab (Istituto Auxologico Italiano, Milan, Italy). In 2020, she got national scientific qualification (ASN) as Associate Professor M-PSI/01, she is Chartered Psychologist (N. 7990) and professional singer. Honoree for the “Best Student Experience” at Proto Awards 2016 Los Angeles (USA) with a project entitled “Body-Swapping: creating the illusion of the embodiment using Virtual Reality”. In 2019, she won the international award "Prize for Mental Health Applications and Ideas" sponsored by the European Alliance of Innovation. My main research focus concerns complex experiences (e.g., the sublime, awe, flow experience, group creativity) as elicited by art (especially, by music) and Virtual Reality (VR). She has published more than 80 articles on these topics. In 2022, she published the first Italian book on awe and the sublime (Publisher: San Paolo Press), the book “Psychology of Salvador Dalì” (Publishers: Out of Nowhere, Repubblica, Le Scienze), and the handbook “Creativity and Design Thinking” (Publisher: The Way press), and I have initiated a new research field concerning Complex Experiences. Her book on “Complex experiences” is now in press (Publisher: Jacabook; Milan). Her work has been featured in international and national media outlets, including the Washington Post, the Scientific American, La Stampa, Repubblica, Corriere della Sera, Il Sole 24 ore, The EurekAlert!, Psychology Today, The Academic Times.


Publicity Chair 

Valentina Mancuso
Junior Researcher
eCampus University

Brief Bio

Ph.D. in Psychology at E-Campus University, Italy. She received her M.S. in Clinical Psychology and Neuropsychology at Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Italy. She won a scholarship for conducting research at the University of California, San Diego for six months. She is associated with SCiP, Psychonomic Society, AIP. She’s a junior researcher at Istituto Auxologico Italiano (Milan, Italy) where she conducts her research on the use of immersive technologies for the assessment of cognitive functions, studying also the interplay between memory and emotions. By now, she has published more than 30 papers in scientific journals and she’s going to publish her first book titled “Biofeedback and Neurofeedback in clinical psychology.