I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1977. After matriculating as deputy head prefect, I immigrated with my parents and younger sister to Israel for ideological reasons (1997). I completed my B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering at Tel Aviv University in 2001, and served in the Israeli Defense Force until 2004, as a systems engineer on the Merkava tank.

With enthusiasm for scientific discovery, I decided to dedicate my analytical and engineering skills towards revealing the mysteries of the brain - with the ultimate goal of ameliorating neurological disorders. The direct Ph.D. program of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Neural Computation (ICNC) was a perfect fit for my aspiration. Ironically, the day following my interview for the program, my father suffered an unforeseen event which left him in a coma for 2 years, further fueling my already passionate drive for neuroscience.

In 2006 I joined the laboratory of Prof. Hagai Bergman. My Ph.D. goal has been to understand the meaning of pathological beta oscillations in the Parkinsonian subthalamic nucleus (STN). Although the focus of much recent research, a clear causal connection between beta oscillations and Parkinson’s disease (PD) symptoms still remains elusive. I attend STN deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery for PD on a regular basis, and I have developed methods to analyze STN microelectrode recordings both during and after surgery. I am rewarded with great satisfaction by the fact that my research both advances basic understanding of basal ganglia function, and also has practical, real-time, application during DBS surgery. I believe that a better understanding of the relationship between pathological oscillations and PD symptoms will one day lead to optimal, closed loop DBS.

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