Cherine Fahim, Ph.D.
email: cherine.fahim@unil.ch
phone: (021) 692-3261
Group de Recherche sur l'Adaptation Socio-Psychobiologique (GRASP)
Institute of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences and Politiques
University of Lausanne, Batiment Anthropole Bureau 3126
1015 Lausanne
Switzerland
Research Interests
My research interests into brain disorders grew out of my early studies of Anthropology and the history of Medicine in ancient Egypt (University of Alexandria 1990-1994), which pushed me to study neurobiology and psychology at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland, 1996-1999). Studying normal brain and behavior left me with innumerable questions regarding what goes wrong in the brain in psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia, bipolar disorders and/or neurological disorders like Parkinson's or Alzheimer's diseases ..... These questions led me to deepen my studies by doing two research internships at New York University (Center for Neural Sciences) and Columbia University (College of Physicians and Surgeons, Department of Medical Genetics) (1999-2001). These research internships answered some of my questions and pushed me to get an M.Sc/Ph.D in Neurological Sciences from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Montreal (2001-2005). At that time I investigated through functional magnetic resonance imaging the effects of an atypical antipsychotic on "normalizing" brain function and improving negative symptoms in schizophrenia. Then I got a postdoctoral research fellowship from the Candian Institutes of Health Reseach at the Montreal Neurological Institute McGill University, Canada (2006-2009). My initial fellowship foray into the brain morphological biomarkers of childhood learning and developmental disabilities (LDD), led me to focus on cortical-based morphology in autism, fragile X and Williams syndrome syndrome. I also worked on assessing brain biomarkers in twins with disruptive behavior disorders within the large longitudinal Quebec Newborn Twin Study. Currently my research interests focus on tackling LDD using a clinical/behavioral/cognitive/genetic/neuroimaging approach in an attempt to translat basic and clinical research into translational medicine.
