Round Table: Career outside academia
Cristina Lemos, Maura Samarani & Sara Romanzi

Cristina Lemos
Cristina is the Program Manager of the Institut Curie’s international PhD program, overseeing approximately 300 PhD students. She began her career in microbiology for biotechnology, completing her MSc at Cranfield University (UK), where she focused on the development of sludge bioremediation processes for Yorkshire Water. While working at the Portuguese pharmaceutical company Bial on a clinical study related to Parkinson’s disease, Cristina’s interests shifted, leading her to pursue a PhD in neuroscience at the University of Coimbra (Portugal). Cristina spent the final year of her PhD in Florianopolis (Brazil), followed by postdoctoral research at the Medical University of Innsbruck (Austria), where she led a project on stress and social interaction. At the Paris Brain Institute, as part of the scientific affairs team, she played a key role in the operational management of the institute’s global international strategy. Cristina’s career has given her a unique cross-cultural perspective and seeing science as a community, she works toward fostering a culture of care, trust, inclusion, and well-being to enhance a better research experience. 





Maura Samarani
After obtaining her PhD in Biochemical Sciences in Milan, Italy, Maura moved to Paris 6 years ago to pursue her postdoc at Institut Pasteur, where she was awarded with a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship in 2020. At the end of her postdoc, she decided to change her career path, and she joined the Institut Imagine as Coordinator of the Education and Society programs. From December 2022, she is then in charge of coordinating and managing the institute’s training programs for young researchers, as well as the human and social sciences programs aimed at improving the lives of rare genetic disease patients and their families and the societal programs to bridge the gap between scientists and society. As a PhD student in Milan, from 2014 to 2018, she organized and participated in 5 European Researchers’ Night and in more than 20 workshops in primary schools to disseminate science to adults and children. From 2021, she is the Italian coordinator of Native scientists association in Paris, whose mission is to connect children and scientists of the same migrant community by organizing science workshops in a shared heritage language.

Sara Romanzi 
Sara carried out her Ph.D. studies in circuit neuroscience in Italy, during which she focused on astrocytes, neural activity in the hippocampus, and approaches to optical imaging. In 2023, wanting to try out some different imaging modalities, she joined Iconeus, where her role is now to convince other scientists to try fUS for a different perspective on brain imaging! Outside work, she challenges what she claims is her natural clumsiness by hiking, climbing, and running. She is also a hungry reader and passionate about anime and manga