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David Bruce Smith is the president of the Institute of Psychobiology in Jerusalem. He is the fourth of six grandchildren born into Charles E. Smith's family. He is senior vice president of Commercial Property Management at the Charles E. Smith Companies, editor-and-chief of Crystal City Magazine, and a freelance writer.
Professor Ronen Segman was elected Director of NIPI in the Fall of 2012. Born in Haifa, Prof. Segman completed his medical studies twenty years ago. He is a member of the Department of Psychiatry at the Hebrew University and Hadassah School of Medicine and Chief of the Psychiatry Liason Service and Molecular Psychiatry Laboratory at the Mt. Scopus Hospital. He has received awards for both his research and his teaching at the medical school. His research interests include the psychopharmacology of affective disorders, schizophrenia and anxiety disorders, studying the genetic basis for mental disease and psychopharmacogenetics. Ronen has published widely on the genetics of various forms of depression, as well as on post-traumatic stress disorder, attention disorders and schizophrenia. He follows the successful leadership of Professors Amiram Carmon, Moshe Abeles, Bernard Lerer and Shaul Hochstein.
Professor Elliot Gershon accepted the post of Chairman of NIPI's Board of Trustees in January 2003. Prof. Gershon came to NIPI from Chicago University where he was the Foundations' Fund Professor and Chairman in Psychiatry from 1998. At the National Institute of Mental Health, he headed the clinical neurogenetics branch since 1984. Before joining the NIMH Biological Psychiatry Branch in 1974, he served as director of research at the Jerusalem Mental Health Center in Israel. He received his B.A. and M.D. from Harvard in 1965. He follows the successful leadership of Professor Joel Elkes. more |
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| NIPI President: David Bruce Smith |
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David Bruce Smith is the president of the Institute of Psychobiology in Jerusalem. He is the fourth of six grandchildren born into Charles E. Smith's family. He has a bachelor's degree in American Literature from George Washington University, and an MA in journalism from New York University. He is senior vice president of Commercial Property Management at the Charles E. Smith Companies, editor-and-chief of Crystal City Magazine, and a freelance writer. He and his grandfather wrote three books and a film together, and with his mother he wrote the first artist's book for the National Museum of Women in the Arts. |
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| NIPI Current Chairman: Professor Elliot Gershon |
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Professor Elliot Gershon accepted the post of Chairman of NIPI's Board of Trustees in January 2003. Prof. Gershon is a leading American psychobiologist who has performed basic and applied research in the fields of neurobiology, genetics, and the treatment of mental disorders.
He received his B.A. and M.D. degrees from Harvard University. In 1971, with NIPI's help, Prof. Gershon helped establish and served as research director of the Jerusalem Mental Health Center at Hadassah Hospital/Hebrew University, the first department of psychiatric research in Israel. He served on the Scientific Advisory Board of NIPI from 1971 to 1974. In 1974, he was appointed a tenured scientist of the (American) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). There, he was a Section Chief in the Biological Psychiatry Branch until 1984, when he was appointed Chief of the Clinical Neurogenetics Branch, where he stayed until 1998. Prof. Gershon joined the University of Chicago in July 1998 as the Foundations' Fund Professor of Psychiatry and Human Genetics, and was also Chairman of Psychiatry until 2003.
An authority on the genetics of psychiatric disorders, Prof. Gershon is a leader in the search for genes that contribute to the development of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. He is a Fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, a member of the editorial boards of several psychiatric journals, and former President of the American Psychopathological Association, Prof. Gershon has edited four books and published more than 350 articles on the neurobiology, genetics, and treatment of mental disorders. |
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| NIPI Current Director: Professor Ronen Segman |
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| Prof. Ronen Segman was elected Director of NIPI in the Fall of 2012. Born in Haifa, Prof. Segman completed his medical studies twenty years ago. He is a member of the Department of Psychiatry at the Hebrew University and Hadassah School of Medicine and Chief of the Psychiatry Liason Service and Molecular Psychiatry Laboratory at the Mt. Scopus Hospital. He has received awards for both his research and his teaching at the medical school. His research interests include the psychopharmacology of affective disorders, schizophrenia and anxiety disorders, studying the genetic basis for mental disease and psychopharmacogenetics. Ronen has published widely on the genetics of various forms of depression, as well as on post-traumatic stress disorder, attention disorders and schizophrenia. He follows the successful leadership of Professors Amiram Carmon, Moshe Abeles, Bernard Lerer and Shaul Hochstein. |
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| Smith-Elkes Lab Director: Professor Micha Spira |
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Professor Micha Spira is the Smith-Elkes Lab Director:. He has served a variety of academic and administrative functions at the Hebrew University including head of the Department of Neurobiology, head of the teaching Division of Physiology, established the Harman Library of the Faculty of Science, and served as Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Science. He was the founding scientific director of the Inter-University Institute for Marine Sciences in Eilat, and established the multinational research program of the Red Sea. |
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| Past Director: Professor Shaul Hochstein |
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Professor Shaul Hochstein served as Director of NIPI from 2002 - 2012. He has chaired the Hebrew University's Program in Brain & Behavior and the Scientific Advisory Board of the Inter-disciplinary Center for Neural Computation. He has worked at Rockefeller University and M.I.T. Prof. Hochstein is not new to the Institute. Early in his career, he was awarded a Psychobiology Young Investigator Grant, and later its prestigious extended grant on memory and learning. He directed the Smith Family Laboratory for Collaborative Research in Psychobiology since its inception over 10 years ago, and serves on the Institute's Scientific Advisory Board.
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| Past Director: Past Director: Professor Bernard Lerer |
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Professor Bernard Lerer served as the Director of the National Institute for Psychobiology in Israel from 1994-2002, after directing the Hadassah Biological Psychiatry Laboratory. Prof. Lerer is currently a Professor of Psychiatry at the Hebrew University - Hadassah Medical School, as well as Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology.
Prof. Lerer's main research interests are the molecular genetic basis of major psychiatric disorders, particularly schizophrenia, psychopharmacogenetics, the neurochemical mechanisms of action of antidepressants and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), long term neurobiological effects of early life stress, and the clinical optimization of ECT. Prof. Lerer is a Past Chairman of the Israel Society for Biological Psychiatry. He was elected to the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology in 1996 and has been Visiting Professor at the Universities of Cape Town, Copenhagen, and Hiroshima. Prof. Lerer has published more than 250 research papers and has edited two books.
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| Past Director: Professor Moshe Abeles |
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Professor Moshe Abeles served as Director of NIPI from 1977-1980, and again from 1984-1994. After specializing in Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, Moshe Abeles became a lecturer, senior lecturer, associate professor, and finally a full professor of Neurophysiology at the Hebrew University. Prof. Abeles's work over the years has won him numerous prizes, including the Baeck Prize, the IAPI First Prize, and the Teva Founders Prize.
Along with his research and directorship of NIPI, Prof. Abeles served as Director of the Department of Physiology at Hebrew University, as Head of the Interdisciplinary Center for Neural Computation, as Head of the Life Sciences Section of the Israel Science Foundation, and Director of the Gonda Brain Research Center at Bar Ilan University. He currently holds the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Ernest and Mona Spiegel Chair in Neurophysiology |
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| Past Director: Professor Amiram Carmon |
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Professor Amiram Carmon was director and founder of The Israel National Institute of Psychobiology in 1971-1977 and again between 1981-1984. Professor Carmon has served as Professor of Neurology and Brain research, Hebrew University & Hadassah Medical School, Professor of Biomedical engineering, and Professor of Behavioral Biology at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, and Director and Head of the Silver Biomedical Engineering Institute, the Technion.
He has published over 140 scientific papers, a large part of these on brain, visual perception, language and communication. Professor Carmon has been involved in key technological developments in medicine including one of the first computerized systems for measurements of regional cerebral blood flow, as well as a CO2 laser based system for studies of neurophysiology of pain and the development of adaptive filtering algorithms for electrophysiological responses to pain.
Professor Carmon left the academic world in 1984 and moved to the high technology arena where he established and ran several ventures. |
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| Past Chairman: Professor Joel Elkes |
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Professor Joel Elkes served as the founding Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the National Institute for Psychobiology in Israel. He was instrumental in conceiving the vision of a national institute serving the needs of the entire Israeli Psychobiology community, and has contributed significantly to the field. Prof. Elkes engaged in unprecedented psychiatric work before the term "experimental psychiatry" even existed, and through his own activities helped to revolutionize the entire methodology of treatment of the mentally ill.
Prof. Elkes is an acknowledged founder of the science of psychopharmacology. He is a Scientific Associate of the Academy of Psychoanalysis, Charter Fellow of Britain's Royal College of Psychiatry, and Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. He was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Honoris Causa, by the Hebrew University in June 1989.
Beginning his scientific life in Britain in the field of physical chemistry, Prof. Elkes continued by way of neuropharmacology and neurochemistry into research on the influence of drugs on electrochemical events in the brain. During a long and distinguished career in Britain, the U.S., and Israel, he founded research organizations that are today among the most respected bodies of their kind. |
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| The National Institute for Psychobiology in Israel - Board of Trustees |
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