Prof. Yuval Nir

Prof. Nir is an investigator at Tel Aviv University (Israel), affiliated with the Sagol School of Neuroscience, the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology (Faculty of Medicine) and the Department of Biomedical Engineering (Faculty of Engineering), as well as the Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) of the Sieratzki-Sagol Center for Sleep Medicine at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center (‘Ichilov’).

Prof. Nir studied at the interdisciplinary program for outstanding students (TAU), completed a M.Sc. in Computer Science (TAU), proceeded to a PhD in neurobiology and then to a postdoctoral fellowship focusing on sleep. In 2012, Prof. Nir set up his own lab at Tel Aviv: http://yuvalnirlab.com. Research in the lab focuses on sleep and its relation to cognition by combining rodent and human research. We study brain activity during sleep, how it supports cognition and restorative functions, and how it affects sensation and consciousness. We also develop sleep technologies and machine learning (ML)-based analysis of sleep EEG data to improve early diagnosis and offer novel treatments in neuropsychiatric disorders.

Prof. Nir has published 3 book chapters 52 articles cited 9150 times to date (Google Scholar), including publications in Nature, Science, Nature Medicine, Molecular Cell, Nature Neuroscience, Neuron, Science Advances, Nature Communications, PNAS, Current Biology and more. He received several awards including the Stanford Wu Tsai Institute visiting scholar award, Teva Founders Prize for basic biomedical research, the Sieratzki prize for Advances in Neuroscience, the Adelis Prize in Neuroscience, as well as HFSP, EMBO, and Fulbright awards. Prof. Nir’s research is supported by major grant agencies including ERC, NIH, NSF-BSF, and ISF grants.