Director BCNI:  Urs Ribary, DSc (Dr.sc.nat.ETH)

 

• Professor and BC LEEF Leadership Chair

        Cognitive Neuroscience in Childhood Health and Development,

• Department Psychology, SFU

• Department Pediatrics and Psychiatry, UBC

• Consultant BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute (BCCHRI),

• Investigator Brain Research Centre, Center for Brain Health (CBH)

• Fellow UBC Institute of Mental Health

• Faculty Affiliate, National Core for Neuroethics (UBC)

• Simon Fraser University (SFU),

• University of British Columbia (UBC), 

 

 

 Vancouver, Canada,

 E-mail:  urs_ribary@sfu.ca

 

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Urs Ribary is the Endowed BC LEEF Leadership Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience, the Director of the Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience Institute (BCNI), and Professor in Psychology, Pediatrics and Psychiatry at Simon Fraser University and University of British Columbia in Vancouver since 2007. He was originally trained in neuroscience and neuropharmacology at the prestigious Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland. For almost 20 years he was Professor in Neuroscience and Director of the functional Brain Imaging Center at NYU Medical Center in New York City, USA. 


He is a world-renowned neuroscientist & pioneer in human brain imaging with expertise in functional brain network connectivity and communication dynamics in the healthy human brain, cognitive disabilities and patients with neurological and psychiatric symptoms. His work covers a multidisciplinary range, reflected by over 200 publications, over 100 invited talks and a total awared funding of 172M$ (consolidated in CAD) as PI, Co-PI or Co-I. His work has been highlighted in Nature Neuroscience, Neuron, the New York Times (twice) and various TV channels including the Discovery Channel, 60-Minutes and resulted in a patent and a 50M US$ mandate from a single donor (as PI). Three of his papers (all published in PNAS) were among the 10 most cited publications in the field. His successful research career is continuously reflected in major discoveries and impacts relating to a better understanding of the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms and brain circuitry in health and disease, the development of neural biomarkers, and was further essential in the translation into interventional strategies, including cognitive training programs for dyslexia (Merzenich et al, Science 1996; Tallal et al, Scienece 1996) and neurosurgical DBS for minimal conscious patients (Schiff et al, Nature 2007)

As the director of the BCNI, he is further facilitating collaborative team efforts across disciplines and institutions towards a coherent, multidisciplinary and world-class networking research institute of brain imaging in developmental cognitive neuroscience and its alterations in cognitive disabilities and neuro-psychiatric pathologies towards specifying detailed neural biomarkers and expanding individual brain-based interventional strategies.