Diego Vidaurre joins the CRM through the ATRAE talent programme

Diego Vidaurre has joined the Centre de Recerca Matemàtica through the ATRAE programme, bringing his expertise in modelling spontaneous brain activity across multiple data modalities. His work focuses on understanding how the brain’s intrinsic dynamics shape perception and relate to behavioural and clinical variables, with a strong emphasis on early stages of neurodegenerative disease.

Diego Vidaurre has joined the Computational and Mathematical Neuroscience group at the Centre de Recerca Matemàtica, supported by the Programa ATRAE. This national initiative brings internationally recognised senior researchers back to Spain after substantial careers abroad, to strengthen the Spanish scientific system through long-term leadership.

Vidaurre’s path to neuroscience began elsewhere. He completed his doctorate in computer science and statistics at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in 2012, then moved to Oxford for seven years of postdoctoral work in computational neuroscience. Positions in Osaka and Aarhus followed, where he rose to professor and built his own research group. Along the way, his focus shifted. “Statistics and machine learning were interesting as goals on their own,” he explains, “but I was even more interested in using them as tools for understanding. At the time, I thought neuroscience would be the science of the twenty-first century, the way physics and genetics were in the twentieth. Today I am a bit more sceptical, but the brain remains the most fascinating thing there is.”

“The brain remains the most fascinating thing there is.”

His group, currently split between the CRM and Denmark, operates along three intertwined lines. The first is methodological: developing and implementing pipelines for analysing functional brain data. The second is basic research, focused on understanding the role of spontaneous brain activity, that constant inner hum that never quite switches off, and how it shapes perception. The third is applied, examining how individual differences in these patterns relate to early markers of dementia.

At the CRM, Vidaurre will lead the project A new integrative statistical framework to connect symptoms to mechanisms in brain disease. The challenge is both technical and conceptual in nature. Understanding the brain through any single imaging modality, he notes, is like “trying to understand what research is being done at the CRM by looking from the outside through a frosted window.” Each technique reveals only a sliver of the full picture. The hope is that combining these partial views can compensate for the blind spots of any one method. His project aims to push that integration further, developing statistical tools capable of merging multiple data sources to reveal the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

The decision to come to Barcelona had personal roots. Vidaurre wanted to be closer to his mother and raise his daughter here. But the scientific reasons carried equal weight. “Barcelona brings together a critical mass of neuroscience and applied mathematics at a top international level,” he says. “And in particular, I think that the CRM, being a centre specifically focused on mathematics, can enrich me a lot in that part.”

His arrival strengthens Barcelona’s growing computational neuroscience ecosystem and opens new collaborative paths within the CRM and across nearby institutions. The CRM is delighted to welcome him.