معرفی
Ifat Levy is the Elizabeth Mears and House Jameson Professor of Comparative Medicine and Vice Chair for Diversity, Inclusion and Equity at Yale School of Medicine. She holds primary appointment in Comparative Medicine with secondary appointments in Psychology and Neuroscience. As Co-director of the Science Fellows Program, she leads initiatives supporting early-career researchers.
Dr. Levy earned her PhD in Neuroscience from Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2004), following undergraduate studies in Physics (1994) and law (LLB, 1997) at Tel Aviv University. Her academic trajectory reflects an interdisciplinary approach bridging quantitative sciences with behavioral research.
Her research focuses on neural mechanisms of human decision-making, particularly examining individual differences in risk and ambiguity processing. Using fMRI, eye-tracking, and physiological measurements, her lab investigates how decision traits contribute to pathological behaviors including PTSD, obesity, and eating disorders. Key research themes include value learning under uncertainty, neural representation of rewards/punishments, and lifespan changes in decision processes.
Analysis of her recent publications reveals strong emphasis on PTSD neurobiology and computational decision neuroscience. Her work frequently employs advanced modeling techniques to understand how trauma exposure alters neural processing of risk and ambiguity, with particular attention to cerebellar contributions to traumatic memory and cannabinoid system involvement in emotional numbing.
Dr. Levy maintains active collaborations with Yale's VA National Center for PTSD, Wu Tsai Institute, and Diabetes Research Center. Her Decision Neuroscience Lab serves as a hub for interdisciplinary research integrating behavioral economics, computational modeling, and neuroimaging approaches.
As Vice Chair for Diversity, Inclusion and Equity, she implements initiatives to enhance representation across academic medicine. Her leadership in the Science Fellows Program demonstrates commitment to mentoring next-generation researchers through structured career development frameworks.
