Prof. Bernard Lerer - Director

Prof. Bernard Lerer
Tel: +972 2 677 7185
Fax: +972 2 643 9294
Email:

Prof. Lerer, Director of the Hadassah Biological Psychiatry Laboratory, is Professor of Psychiatry at the Hebrew University - Hadassah Medical School. He also serves as the Director of the National Institute for Psychobiology in Israel http://www.psychobiology.org.il and Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology http://www.journals.cup.org. Prof. Lerer graduated, with Distinction, from the University of Cape Town Medical School in 1971. He completed his residency training in psychiatry at Hadassah and Herzog Hospitals in Jerusalem. From 1982-1984 he was a Senior Research Fellow in Psychopharmacology at Lafayette Clinic, Wayne State University, Detroit, with Prof. Samuel Gershon. From 1984-1990 he was Director of Research at Herzog Hospital (Ezrath Nashim), Jerusalem and founded the Yaakov Herzog Center for Brain and Psychiatry Research. In 1990 he moved to Hadassah - Hebrew University Medical Center where he founded the Biological Psychiatry Laboratory. Prof. Lerer's main research interests are the molecular genetic basis of major psychiatric disorders, particularly schizophrenia, psychopharmacogenetics, the neurochemical mechanisms of action of antidepressants and ECT, long term neurobiological effects of early life stress and the clinical optimization of ECT. He was awarded the Bornstein Research Prize for Psychiatry and Neurology and the Hadassah-Hebrew University Faculty of Medicine Research Prize in 1981 and the U.S. Society for Biological Psychiatry, A.E. Bennet Award for Basic Science in 1984. He is a Past-Chairman of the Israel Society for Biological Psychiatry. He was elected to American College of Neuropsychopharmacology in 1996 and has been Visiting Professor at the Universities of Cape Town, Copenhagen and Hiroshima. He has published more than 250 research papers and has edited two books.