Hi, I’m Saioa París Alberdi, a (nutrition psychiatry) PhD student with TOUCH-COFOUND, and this week I’ll be introducing you to my research world. 🧠 I study the connection between nutrition, gut, and development of the brain; why what we eat may shape mental health and vice versa from the beginning.

Hi I'm Marilena, a psychologist, and my PhD will look at why cognitive and emotional recovery after critical illness differs so much between people. I’ll explore the possible role of cognitive reserve, inflammation and genetic vulnerability in these differences. @uab.cat

Des del Parc de Recerca UAB participem en projectes europeus i internacionals que connecten recerca, talent i innovació per afrontar reptes socials, ambientals i econòmics! 🤩 Descobreix @express2project.eu, @touch-cofund.bsky.social, CONFETI, ReWoW, PHYNEST i ULALABS a www.pruab.cat/ca/projectes

🧠 On Tuesday, the @pruab.cat Comms team delivered a training session on scientific communication and social media as part of the 2nd Initial Workshop of the TOUCH programme. It covered various aspects of #scicom and the importance of being on #sm for research transfer and dissemination. @uab.cat

Hi! I'm Yuhan Zhang, a TOUCH candidate at @uab.cat. 🧠My research focuses on psychosis risk prediction through language and Formal Thought Disorder assessments with the assistance of #ai. At the center of my work is curiosity. I believe science is about staying open to things that may be difficult.

Hi! I’m Zachary, a TOUCH PhD candidate in Psychology 🌿 I study how nature can support mental health and complement healthcare systems. My advice: seek environments where people uplift you, recognise your potential and help you grow. #TOUCHProgramme #PhDLife @uab.cat

Bon #SantJordi i #SantaJordina! 🌹🐲📚 Aquest any el volem celebrar amb una tria dels nostres llibres preferits, que barregen transferència, innovació, patents i emprenedoria amb un argument trepidant... els coneixes tots?? 😜

Hi! I’m Giorgia, a PhD candidate in Neuroscience 🧠 My research focuses on bridging the gap between human fMRI and Calcium Imaging mouse data. In my PhD project, I use representational similarity analysis to study how information is encoded in patterns of brain activity; how these patterns relate.

Hi! I’m Liubovi, a PhD candidate in Neuroscience 🧠, and I'm sharing a common misconception: mental health is only about psychological state. Neuron integrity, cerebral microvessels, and neural network connectivity shape cognition — and their breakdown contributes to age-related cognitive decline.

How does one stay motivated? Here's Philipp Sittinger's habit to mantain his motivation ✊: I never “do big tasks.” I break everything down until the next step is just a few minutes away. Then another. If I don’t look up, the “big task” gets done. Just through accumulation of non-overwhelming steps.

Today, Philipp Sittinger shares with ys the best advice he got during his PhD: “Progress isn’t linear. Judge your work by the trend, not the day.” Some weeks are messy and slow, but the average over months is what counts.

If I could ask something of society: to normalize #audits. 🤔 We audit bridges, planes, and medicines... why not AI systems that shape what we see, what we’re told, or how we’re categorized?

🧠 Philip Sittinger: "I treat AI like cars: benchmarks are horsepower—impressive, but not safety. In sensitive contexts (including mental health), I crash-test models with different techniques to see where bias shows up and who gets harmed." #AI #Fairness

Today, Johan Sittinger is sharing one of his biggest learnings about #academia: Good research is mostly iteration, not “genius moments.” It’s debugging, rethinking assumptions, failing, narrowing scope, and trying again. @uab.cat @pruab.cat @psicologiauab.bsky.social

Meet Philipp Sittinger, our next PhD candidate featured in TOUCH! With a BSc & MSc in Psychology, he’s now doing a PhD in Computer Science at the CVC, building explainable AI to evaluate large language datasets and audit bias in mental-health related user detection. @psicologiauab.bsky.social

🤝Let's meet Francesca Railneau, our next PhD student at TOUCH! 🧠Hi, I’m a psychotherapist and researcher whose work focuses on participatory research: involving MH service users as collaborators. 🎓For my PhD, I explore how co-creating research can make science meaningful, ethical, and impactful.

My research is driven by lived experience. ⏳ I believe research should evolve with life, shaping how we grow—not just what we know. 📚 At the heart of my research on older adults is a simple idea: fulfillment isn’t limited to youth. Flourishing is possible at every stage of life. 🌻

❎ Myth: Aging is something to fear, resist, or reverse. ✅ What my research shows: Aging is a meaningful, developmental life process—not just a medical one. Healthy aging isn’t something we start at retirement; it’s shaped by how we live across the entire lifespan.

Did you know? 🤔 Helping older adults revisit and share meaningful life memories can boost their life satisfaction and overall well-being. 🧠 Reminiscence therapy is emerging as a simple, drug-free way to promote healthy psychological aging in communities.  @uab.cat

🚀 Today we're introducing Sneha Ouseph, a TOUCH PhD candidate: a psychologist from India exploring flourishing and self-compassion, now focused on healthy aging. Her PhD compares older adults’ lived experiences in India and Spain, plus experts’ views on modifiable psychosocial risks to QoL. @uab.cat

Why #decolonial research? 🤔 Because it asks who defines knowledge and whose realities are silenced, making colonial power relations visible instead of neutral. It shifts us from studying people as objects to working with them, valuing situated and community knowledges. @uab.cat @uchile.bsky.social

Meet Pamela Merrill, PhD candidate in TOUCH. Psychologist from Chile with an Erasmus Mundus joint MA in literature & gender studies. 🤩 Her research explores fiction, monstrous and self narratives to rethink mental health, desire & subjectivity in higher education. @uab.cat

Whats's an unexpected difficulty Firaol has encountered? Let's hear it! ⬇️ As an Ethiopian studying in Spain, an unexpected difficulty: learning Catalan and Castellano at the same time. People switch between them in a single conversation and sometimes I have no idea which is which😂 @uab.cat

🤔 The most common misconception about treatment-resistant depression (TRD) is that it is an untreatable condition. 🧠 TRD is a failure to respond to at least two adequate antidepressant trials regardless of optimal dosing and adherence. This occurs in approximately 20% to 50% of individuals... ⬇️

🐍 A core tool in my PhD: #Python. With Python, we can do almost everything. From programming experiments and running statistical analyses to creating beautiful visualisations and implementing AI models. Learning it in advance was a real game changer for my PhD journey.

Discovering #MultimodalIntegration: In mental health research, data comes from neural signals, physiological responses, behaviour,... Tomás' goal is to combine them using ML models that capture how these interact. 🤯 It’s like building a map of the mind that connects biology, experience, and emotion.

✨Meet Tomás D’Amelio, a PhD candidate in the TOUCH Programme! He’s building predictive models that integrate multimodal data to understand cognitive & affective dynamics. His work connects neuroscience, emotions, and AI. He explores how machine learning can reveal patterns behind health & behaviour.

Today, Agenese asks us something she'd love to know: I'd love to ask to society is "what would our world look like if #inclusion were not a policy, but a feeling that every person, regardless of origin 🌍, could carry within themselves"? ❤️ webs.uab.cat/touch/

My biggest surprise in academia? 🤯 How much it changes across countries 🌍. Moving from one place to another and building many international relationships 🤝, I realised that “academia” can carry very different meanings depending on where you experience it ✨.

👩‍🎓 Meet Agnese Capurri, featured in TOUCH! She’s an Italian sociologist doing her PhD at @uab.cat (GRAFO), exploring migrants’ mental health. Her research focuses on the wellbeing of Pakistani mothers and daughters in Barcelona. 🌍💬