Dr Florina Uzefovsky
Principal Investigator Bio-Empathy Lab, Ben Gurion University
Florina is currently the Principal Investigaor at the Bio-Empathy Lab in the Psychology department and the Zlotowski Center for Neuroscience at the Ben Gurion University in the Negev.
While at the Autism Research Centre on sabbatical she was working on a collaboration with the Social Affective Neuroscience Lab (SANS) at Haifa University in Israel, led by Professor Simone Shamay-Tsoory. This project investigated the role of the receptor genes for the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin, in both brain function and social cognition, in people with autism.
Florina completed her BA at the Hebrew University in an Honours program combining Psychology and Biology (Psychobiology). She completed her Masters in Clinical Psychology and completed the Doctoral Program at the Hebrew University. Her PhD thesis investigated the biological basis of empathy, employing methods from the fields of social and developmental psychology, molecular genetics and neuroendocrinology. Upon completing her PhD, she conducted two postdoctoral research projects. The first is a longitudinal study that focused on the early development of empathy in infants. In the second project, she investigated gene by environment interaction effects on PTSD.