Researchers

Gal Meiri is the head of the Soroka Medical Center Preschool Psychiatry Unit and a faculty member of the BGU Medical School. Together with his staff, Gal diagnoses approximately 150 new autism cases annually and perform follow-up assessments of the children until the age of 8. 

Gal has performed several studies regarding the prevalence of autism in the Bedouin community with a focus on understanding cross-cultural social, genetic, and environmental risk factor. In addition Gal has initiated a new program to implement MCHAT screening tools in the Negev.

Ilan Dinstein is a faculty member in the Psychology and the Cognitive and Brain Sciences departments at BGU.

Ilan and his students use neuroimaging techniques including MRI and EEG to better understand brain function and structure during early autism development, with a strong focus on 1-4 years old toddlers.

Projects include the acquisition of overnight EEG recordings and MRI scans from toddlers during natural sleep. 

For additional information see www.dinshi.com.

Idan Menashe is a faculty member in the Public Health Department at BGU. Idan and his students use integrated epidemiological, statistical, and bioinformatics approaches to study the effect of genetic and non-genetic risk factors contributing to ASD etiology. 

Projects include a focus on revealing  ASD prevalence, exposure to risk factors, and genetic variations in the Bedouin population and assesments of the effect of prenatal air pollution on the risk of ASD in Israel.

For more information see http://midan34.wix.com/idan-menashe .

Hava Golan is a faculty member in the physiology and cell biology department at BGU. Hava and her students study how in-utero hypoxia-ischemia, inflammation, and antiepileptic medication affect brain development in animal models. 

A current direction of research is focused on the potential role of maternal/fetal one-carbon metabolism as a risk factor of autism in both defeciant animal models and mothers with genetic polymorphisms that confer susceptibility. 

For additional information see http://fohs.bgu.ac.il/golanlab.

Florina Uzefovsky is a faculty member in the psychology department at BGU.

Florina's research focuses on characterizing cognitive and emotional facets of empathy and empathy development in children diagnosed with autism, and the underlying biological processes – from genes, to hormones, to brain. 

Nadav Davidovitch, MD, MPH, PhD is an epidemiologist and public health physician. He is a Full Professor and Chair, Department of Health Systems Management at the Faculty of Health Sciences and the Guilford-Glaser Faculty of Business and Management at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. His current research deals with health policy; health inequities; health and immigration; vaccination policy; environmental health and public health history and ethics. ​​