Fabio Porru

I work as a postdoctoral researcher for the project “Making big data meaningful for a promising start in the first 1000 days of life”. My role is to apply a systems thinking approach to disentangle the complexity behind early child development.

Graduated in Medicine and Surgery, most of my research was focused on public mental health. In the coming year I will defend my Ph.D. thesis entitled “Causes and consequences of mental health problems in the population”. With my doctorate I have adopted an occupational perspective to investigate the relation between study/work and health, especially in the young population and among university students.

I aim to have a societal impact, and I try to achieve this at multiple levels. I aspire to have a high impact on academia through excellent and innovative research. In addition, I want to be the type of scientist who takes time to explain to people and society the meaning and the importance of science. I am working on many online projects to raise awareness on mental health and fight the stigma for mental disorders, and to promote scientific research.

I believe education is the base of our society in terms of health, social equality, and having a fulfilling life. Consequently, education is also the strongest weapon to improve society and people’s life. This is why I am actively trying to get into teaching. This is why changes in the education system are among the goals of the research project on students’ health I developed and that, and I want my research to serve as the basis for an evidence-based innovation.

I am very interested in social problems, such as social inequalities, refugee crisis, climate change, and gender inequalities, and l am always ready to play my part to improve myself, my environment, and society. this is why I have joined the Green Team and the Diversity & Inclusion task forces at the Erasmus MC.