News: BCBL attracts research talent through the “la Caixa” Foundation

Iria Nieto Rebollo and Pan Zhang will be pursuing their PhDs at the San Sebastián-based institution as part of the INPhINIT programme.

The Basque Centre on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL) continues to attract research talent seeking to develop their careers in neuroscience applied to language. Two of the 60 researchers selected in the latest call for applications for the “la Caixa” Foundation’s INPhINIT programme will carry out their PhD projects at the San Sebastián-based organisation.

One of them, Iria Nieto Rebollo from Bizkaia, will benefit from a Retaining grant to conduct research within the ‘Attention, Cognitive Control and Affect’ group, focusing on how people experience cognitive conflict—a phenomenon that occurs when multiple incompatible representations arise simultaneously.

“My aim is to understand how affective assessment works and how it might interact with other cognitive processes, such as learning. This could help in the design of more effective educational and therapeutic tools,” says Iria Nieto Rebollo.

Having graduated in 2024 with a degree in Speech and Language Therapy from the Pontifical University of Salamanca, she was awarded the Prize for Outstanding Academic Achievement. In 2025 she obtained a Master’s degree in Cognitive Neuroscience of Language from the University of the Basque Country (EHU) in collaboration with BCBL.

Similarly, Pan Zhang, a researcher from China who has been awarded an ‘Incoming’ grant, will work alongside the ‘Perceptual Inference’ group to explore how the brain anticipates what we are about to hear in our everyday conversations, and will combine neuroscience and artificial intelligence to gain a better understanding of an essential human skill: communication.

“Using neuroimaging methods and tools, and with the support of AI, I will investigate how the brain structures responsible for hearing enable rapid and efficient speech comprehension. The relevance of this research lies in how prediction helps us follow conversations fluently, even in noisy or complex situations, and could be applied in clinical settings such as dyslexia and schizophrenia,” explains Pan Zhang.

Funding from the INPhINIT programme enables PhD projects to be carried out over a four-year period at universities and research centres in Spain and Portugal. In each call for applications, 60 grants are awarded with the twofold objective of retaining and attracting talent to promote research excellence in these countries.

There are two types of grants: “Retaining”, for researchers who have resided in Spain or Portugal for more than 12 months and wish to continue their research in these countries; and “Incoming”, aimed at young researchers of any nationality who wish to carry out their work at centres of excellence in Spain —accredited as Severo Ochoa or María de Maeztu, or at the Carlos III Health Institutes— or at Portuguese units classified as Excellent by the FCT.

With these two new additions, BCBL now has 8 INPhINIT researchers pursuing their PhDs at the centre.