Melanie Tschiersch successfully defends her PhD Thesis!

On January 20, 2026, Melanie Tschiersch defended her PhD thesis in the main hall (Aula Magna) of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Barcelona. Her thesis, titled "The role of distributed processing across brain regions in working memory," was co-supervised by Joao Barbosa (Institut de la Neuromodulation, Paris) and Albert Compte. The defense committee included Carmen Cavada (UAM, Madrid), Timothy Buschman (Princeton Univ, USA), and Klaus Wimmer (CRM).

Melanie’s work took a deep dive into how different parts of the cerebral cortex communicate during spatial working memory, blending computational modeling, neural data analysis from collaborating monkey labs (a big thanks to Matt Smith at Carnegie Mellon Univ and Christos Constantinidis at Vanderbilt Univ), and TMS experiments in humans. She gave a clear and engaging presentation of her key findings, sparking thoughtful questions and comments from the committee. She defended her results with confidence, showing a strong grasp of both the science and its broader implications. Her research offers fresh insights into the brain’s working memory mechanisms and lays down a solid path for future cognitive computational neuroscience research.

Her journey through this project clearly reflects her passion and dedication, making a meaningful contribution to the field and inspiring those who follow.