Developmental Psychopathology Lab

Lab Director

Tomer Shechner

Associate Professor

Prof. Shechner completed his M.A .and Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at Tel-Aviv University. He completed his first post-doctoral training at the Adler Developmental Psychopathology Institute and second post-doctoral training at the Section of Developmental Affective Neuroscience at the National Institute of Mental Health under the supervision of Dr. Danny Pine. He completed his clinical internship at Schneider Children’s Medical Center and is a licensed clinical psychologist. Tomer joined the Psychology Department at the University of Haifa as a senior lecturer in March 2013. His major line of research focuses on understanding the interaction between biological, cognitive, behavioral and environmental factors in the development of anxiety disorders.

If you would like to view Prof. Shechners’ full C.V. Click Here!

Research Associate

Dr. Omer Horovitz

Dr. Horovitz received his M.A. in Psychobiology and Ph.D. in Behavioral Neuroscience from the University of Haifa. His M.A research involved studying sex differences, depressive symptoms and profiling of behavioral psycho-pathological profiles in rat models of PTSD. His Ph.D. research focused on factors that affect plasticity of control-ability and positive/negative affect-related aspects of higher limbic regions. His research interests are affective disorders, emotional brain networks, animal models of psychopathologies, characterization of individual profiles and in-vivo electrophysiology. Currently, Dr. Horovitz is a senior lecturer in the psychology department at Tel Hai College.

Ph.D. Students

Shani Danon-Kraun

Shani received her B.A. in Psychology from Ben Gurion University of the Negev and completed her M.A. in Psychobiology at the University of Haifa. Her research involved searching for anxiety and depression patterns in ERP’s of adults diagnosed with PTSD. Shani’s experience includes managing the EEG Human laboratory of The Institute for Study of Affective Neuroscience. Her current Ph.D. research focuses on differences in neural activity of Event Related Potentials (ERPs) during fear conditioning, extinction and a return of fear (ROF) task in anxious and non-anxious youth.

Rivkah Ginat-Frolich

Rivkah received her B.A. in Psychology and English from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), and is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Child-Clinical Psychology at the University of Haifa. Before beginning her Ph.D., Rivkah was a research assistant in the Sub-chance Perception in Anxiety, Depression and Unconscious Cognition lab at UIC and in the Cognition and Emotion Lab at the Hebrew University. In addition, Rivkah served as a research associate at METIV: The Israel Center for Psychotrauma. Rivkah’s current research focuses on perceptual discrimination training as a means to decrease fear overgeneralization in both typically-developing and clinically anxious youth and adult populations.

Ben Mernick

Ben completed his B.A. in the History of Ideas at Brandeis University and is currently a PhD student in Clinical Neuropsychology at the University of Haifa. At Brandeis, Ben researched the theory behind an ongoing debate within disability studies through the lens of Jean Paul Sartre’s existential philosophy. Subsequently, Ben completed additional coursework at the Hebrew University Department of Psychology. He also joined the Biological Psychiatry Laboratory at the Hadassah University Medical Center, where he investigated the neural underpinnings of Late-Life Depression in a translational rodent model. For his doctoral research, Ben is developing a method of predicting pediatric anxiety before its onset using Electroencephalography (EEG) recordings.

Andres Konichezky

Andres is a Clinical and Health Psychologist. He received his MA in clinical psychology from Tel Aviv University. After completing his clinical internship he established a cognitive behavioral unit at the psychological services of Tel Aviv University, and then founded the psychosomatic clinic at Schneider Medical Center. For the past three years Andres has served as the head of the psychological services at the Edmond and Lily Safra Children’s Hospital at Sheba Medical center. He has been involved in various research projects conducted in pediatric anxiety and has published papers on biofeedback, CBT and Hypnosis. His current research focuses on Mindfulness and Self-Compassion in children and adolescents. Specifically, the development of group protocol aimed to enhance self-compassion in youth that will be implemented and tested in school environments.

Tal Eden

Tal received his B.A in psychology and mathematics (computer science track) and his M.A. in clinical psychology from Tel-Aviv University. He completed his clinical internship in Haemek Medical Center and is a licensed clinical psychologist. In the past several years, Tal worked as a senior staff member in the therapeutic foster care unit at Orr-Shalom for children and youth at risk and led the formulation of an employee support unit at Physicians for Human Rights. Parallel to his therapeutic work, he worked in several start-up companies as an algorithms designer and as a data scientist. His current research focuses on testing the connection between smartphone usage and psychopathology.

Zohar Klein

Zohar received his B.A. in Psychology from the University of Haifa and is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Clinical Neuropsychology at the University of Haifa. During his B.A., he was a research assistant in the Developmental Psychopathology lab and conducted psychophysiological and behavioral research relating to anxiety disorders. Zohar’s current research focuses on improving perceptual distinction abilities through a cognitive training task designed to aid individuals with anxiety related disorders ability to distinguish between threat and safety cues in their environment.

Yael Skversky-Blocq

Yael received her B.Sc. in Psychology and Pre-Medicine from the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD) and is currently pursuing her PhD. in Clinical Neuropsychology at the University of Haifa. During her junior and senior years at UMD, Yael was a research assistant in a developmental psychology lab, focusing on attachment theory and parenting style. After graduating, she worked for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where she investigated SV40 and its connection to cancer. In 2012 Yael moved to Israel and joined an epigenetics lab at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. There, she studied tissue-specific methylation in the mouse model. At the same time, she volunteered at Shaare Zedek in the adolescent out-patient clinic, working with patients suffering from eating disorders.

M.A. Students

Shachar Mechrez

Shachar completed her BA in Psychology and Computer Science, focusing on neuroscience and cognition, at Ben Gurion University. During her bachelor's degree she worked as a research assistant at the Ben-Gurion University's Center for Autism Research, conducting research on and building a database for children ages 0-6 who were diagnosed with autism. Currently, Shachar is an M.A. graduate student in Developmental Psychology and is a teaching assistant for the undergraduate course in Developmental Psychology. Her current research deals with the effect of hormone therapy on transgender adolescents in perceptual aspects.

Dana Ben Ezra

Dana completed her BA in Psychology and Administration at the University of Ben Gurion. During her bachelor’s degree, she worked as a research assistant in a lab studying ‘first-time parents,’ and took part in a study examining the emotional processes experienced by parents when their first child enters first grade. Dana is an M.A. graduate student in Child Clinical Psychology. Her current research deals with the effect of hormone therapy on transgender adolescents in emotional and social aspects.