Michal Schnaider Beeri, PhD

Michal Schnaider Beeri directs the Joseph Sagol Neuroscience Center at Sheba Medical Center, Israel; she is an associate professor on the faculty at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY, and at the Interdisciplinary Center, Israel. Dr. Beeri's BA and MA degrees were awarded Magna Cum Laude. She received her PhD in rehabilitation psychology from Bar Ilan University in Israel in 2000. She has won the Brookdale Institute of Gerontology and Human Development, the Gonda Foundation, the International College of Geriatric Psychoneuropharmacology Young Investigator, and the Mount Sinai Academic Excellence Faculty Council awards. Specializing in geriatric psychology, her career has been fully devoted to the study of cognitive impairment, Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and dementia. A major focus of her work has been diabetes as a risk factor for dementia and AD. She is the principal investigator of the Israel Diabetes and Cognitive Decline study, on which this application focusing on arterial wall function will be based. Dr. Beeri's other major scientific focus is the neuropsychological and neurobiological aspects of cognition in the oldest-old, the fastest growing segment of the population, at the highest risk for dementia, but the least studied. She has over 85 peer-reviewed publications, most of which are devoted to risk and protective factors against cognitive impairment and dementia. She has been continuously funded by the National Institutes on Health and other aging related funding organizations (such as the Alzheimer’s Association) since 2003.

Dr. Beeri was born in Israel, grew up in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and moved back to Israel to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces and complete her studies. In 2001, she moved to New York to join the full-time faculty at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where she keeps an academic position. In 2011, she accepted the invitation by the CEO of the Sheba Medical Center to direct the Joseph Sagol Neuroscience Center, a multi-disciplinary, patient-oriented, brain research center. Since then, Dr. Beeri enjoys very much sharing her time between Israel and New York, since she believes in the synergism of bringing to Israel the superb and rigorous Mount Sinai scientific level, while bringing back to Mount Sinai the “out of the box” thinking of the Israeli scientific brain.

Dr. Beeri is married and has three children. She is a sports devotee, and a passionate fan of Brazilian soccer, for which she considers herself an expert, no less than for brain aging.