Ofer Pasternak, PhD

Dr. Pasternak is an Associate Professor in Psychiatry and Assistant Professor in Radiology, Mass General Brigham Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, and Director of Neuroscience Image Computing in the Psychiatry Neuroimaging Laboratory. With a PhD in computer science, he has over 15 years of experience in MRI and advanced imaging techniques for brain disorder identification. He co-authored over 190 papers and led several funded research projects. His research focuses on developing innovative analysis methods and pipelines to identify biomarkers for various pathologies. He is a key contributor to several large-scale initiatives, including leadership roles at the Accelerating Medicine Partnership® Schizophrenia project and clinical trials. He is known for developing free-water imaging, to enhance the specificity of diffusion MRI for detecting microstructural pathologies like neuroinflammation and axonal degeneration. This method has been applied to study a range of brain disorders, including Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia, brain injuries and Alzheimer's disease.