Prof. Gal, Richter-Levin

Affiliation Faculty / Department:
The Herta and Paul Amir Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Psychology; The Faculty of Natural Sciences, Sagol Department of Neurobiology; The Integrated Brain and Behavior Research Center (IBBRC)

Academic Background:
Prof. Gal Richter-Levin is a world renowned expert of behavioral neuroscience. He obtained his PhD in Neurobiology (1992) at the Weizmann Institute, Rehovot, Israel, under the supervision of Prof. Menahem Segal, and then was an HFSP fellow at the National Institute for Medical Research, London, UK, mentored by Prof. Tim Bliss. In 1995 he joined the University of Haifa, where he was the founder and head of the Haifa Forum for Brain and Behavior.
Since 2006 he is a full professor at both the Sagol Department of Neurobiology and the Department of Psychology.
He served as Dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Haifa (2009-2013), was the president of the Israeli Society for Biological Psychiatry (2006 – 2008) and the president of the Israel Society for Neuroscience (ISFN) (2015-2017).

Research Interests:
Research in the laboratory focuses on the understanding of the neurobiology of stress-related disorders, particularly Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and stress-induced depression, using animal models. We examine long-term alterations in brain areas associated with processing of emotions and emotional memories, such as the hippocampus, amygdala and prefrontal cortex. We also study the effects of stressful experiences in early life on cognitive and emotional abilities in adulthood.

We study mechanisms of stress resilience, and how these can be enhanced.

We study individual differences in response to stress and trauma, and their implications to understanding the subjective nature of the perceived stress experience.

We also study Individual differences in response to treatment, towards developing tools for personalized mental medicine.

Home Page URL:
https://richter-lab.haifa.ac.il/