Professor Yaniv Assaf is a computational neuroscientist and biophysicist that studies brain anatomy and connectivity. Yaniv is a Professor of Neurobiology at the School of neurobiology, biochemistry and biophysics of the faculty of life-sciences at Tel Aviv University and the Sagol school of neuroscience. Yaniv also serves as the Head of the Strauss Center for Neuroimaging at Tel Aviv University as well as of the Strauss Neuroplasticity Brain Bank (SNBB). In addition, Yaniv is also the co-founder of brainvivo, a startup company that aims to digitize human brains.
After receiving his graduate degrees in chemistry from Tel Aviv University, Yaniv Assaf completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). During his postdoc, Yaniv developed novel analysis tools that enhance the accuracy and sensitivity of MRI-based white matter mapping techniques, such as the Composite hindered and restricted model of diffusion (CHARMED) and AxCaliber.
Positions previously held by Yaniv include the head of the Sagol School of Neuroscience, and the head of the Department of Neurobiology at Tel Aviv University. He currently holds multiple grants, including grants from the Israel Science Foundation (ISF), the British Council, the NSF/BSF CRCNS program and from the European Research Council (ERC).
Yaniv research studies the brain focusing on four principal and intertwined subjects: brain connectivity and plasticity, structural connectomics, brain evolution and cortical fingerprinting. One such project involves the characterization of microstructural and connectivity changes that occur following real-life skill learning and brain plasticity and