Ofer Pasternak, PhD

Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Assistant Professor of Radiology

Ofer graduated from the Interdisciplinary Program for Outstanding Students at Tel-Aviv University, Israel, where he obtained his BSc and PhD in computer science. For his PhD research, he worked on analysis and acquisition of Diffusion MRI, aiming at increasing the imaging information obtained for complex brain architecture.

Ofer joined the lab on October 2009 as a Fulbright post-doctoral fellow working under the joint supervision of Professor Shenton at the PNL and Professor Westin at the LMI. His current work concentrates on facilitating functional diffusion MRI sequences to study brain dysfunctions in schizophrenia. Another main research interest is the Free-water measure that is derived from diffusion imaging. Free-water is found to be sensitive to neuro-infflammation and the research aim is to use this method along with other DTI metrics to better understand the relationshop between neurodegenration and inflammation. This is currently studied in Schizophrenia, Traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and Multiple Sclerosis.