Sara studied psychology at the University of Vienna (Austria) where she finished her diploma in the Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (SCAN) Unit before completing her Ph.D. in the Experimental and Clinical Pharmacopsychology group with Prof. Boris Quednow at the Psychiatric University Hospital Zurich, University of Zurich (Switzerland). For her PhD project, she investigated social functioning in individuals with chronic non-medical prescription opioid use (NMPOU). During her postdoc time in the Leknes Affective Brain (LAB) lab at the University of Oslo (Norway) and the Heilig lab, Center for Social and Affective Neuroscience (CSAN), at Linköping University (Sweden), Sara was trained in social neuroscience and experimental human pharmacology research with a special focus on the opioid system.

For her third postdoc time, Sara is investigating the link between addiction and the endocannabinoid system by analyzing hair and plasma endocannabinoids in individuals with different substance use disorders (cocaine, opioids, and alcohol) at the Psychiatric University Hospital Zurich, University of Zurich (UZH). She has been recently awarded the “Ambizione” grant by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) for the project “The mu-opioid receptor system and social attachment: affiliative behavior and stress”, which enabled her to start an independent project and her junior research group at the Psychiatric University Hospital Zurich.

Sara is particularly interested in the psychological and neurobiological mechanisms underpinning drug addiction, specifically focused on stress and social functioning, with the long-term goal to improve prevention as well as treatment outcome of substance use disorders.