Lab Members

Pavel Goldstein, PhD – Head of Integrative Pain (iPain) Laboratory, Head of MPH Biostatistics track at the School of Public Health

I have completed Master in Biostatistics and PhD in pain neuroscience. During my PhD studies, I was exposed to the field of pain research that is still overflowed with endless debates about basic questions: how we measure pain? What causes pain? How we treat pain? Completing graduate studies I found myself at the Prof. Tor Wager’s lab, leading projects with a focus on digital solutions for chronic pain. In 2019 I founded Integrative Pain Laboratory at the University of Haifa to gather novel understanding of chronic pain conditions, developing new ways of measuring, preventing and treating chronic pain.

My research is essential for more than pure knowledge. Ultimately, my future research is driven by the need to integrate between the academy and the industry. Providing data science consultations for medical device companies, academic researchers from multiple fields, and doctors helped me acquire a “common ground” between academic investigators, business representatives, and healthcare providers. When all parties see the advantage of combining the industrial drive to ‘get things done’ with clinical insights and the academic urge to ‘understand how it works’, the final outcomes improve significantly.

My short interview with Lin Health.

Email: pavelg@stat.haifa.ac.il

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Tamar Kleinhendler – Integrative Pain (iPain) Lab Research Manager; Communication & Journalism PhD Student

Tamar received her MA in Communications and her BA in Psychology and Communication from the University of Haifa. She is a PhD student at the Department of Communication and Journalism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her dissertation focuses on moral judgment and uncivil discourse on social media networks, aiming to better understand the emotional factors leading political polarization.

Alongside academic work, Tamar is an experienced marketing professional, with a demonstrated history of working on complex projects in the Consumer Goods & Pharmaceutical industries. Skilled in Marketing strategy, Digital Marketing, Content Development and Market Research.

Saar Draznin Shiran – Integrative Pain (iPain) Lab Project Manager; Master’s Student in Dance Movement Therapy

Saar obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Tel Hai College in 2011. Today she is a Master’s student for Dance Movement Therapy in the Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Sciences.

Saar joined the Integrative Pain Laboratory in 2021 and will take part in the PainStory Project. Her Master’s thesis will investigate chronic pain patients’ readiness for psycho-social interventions. Her research will seek to identify behavioral and biographical indicators in a patient’s profile which can lead to better understanding of the complexity of the healing process of chronic pain and better tailor interventions to each individual patient profile.

For many years, Saar has been interested in the complex relationship between emotional responses and physical reactions, in particular the role of the cardiovascular system and breathing patterns on emotional and physical response.

Saar has rich field experience in a variety of therapeutic movement, dance and mindfulness practices. She believes that Motion leads to Emotion and where there is movement there can be change and development.

Email: saar.draznin@gmail.com

Hiba Akel – Master of Clinical Pharmacy, student for PhD in Public Health

BSc Pharmacy, MSc Clinical Pharmacy

Hiba is a doctoral student in Public Health. Her doctoral research focuses on examining the impact of multilevel factors affecting drug-prescribing errors in inpatients, and the optimization of clinical decision support systems (CDSSs) to improve safety of medication treatment. Hiba obtained her Master of Science in Clinical Pharmacy from the Hebrew University, during which she investigated the effectiveness of antibiotic lock therapy in hematoncology children with Catheter Related Blood Stream Infection (CRBSI). Currently, she is a clinical pharmacist at the Clalit Health Services with expertise in CDSSs, Clinical informatics, Medication safety, and antimicrobial stewardship.

Accomplishments:

Developed and implemented a clinical decision support system responsible for assessing medication safety for a large investigational study.
Worked with product designers and product managers to design user interfaces in clinical applications.
Datamined large healthcare datasets utilizing SQL report writing.

Skill Highlights: Electronic health record and Clinical Decision support system specialist, Clinical Pharmacy practice experience, SQL report generation and analysis, Clinical informatics, Medication safety, project management, workflow optimization.

Research interests include medication safety, antimicrobial stewardship and CDSS.

Email: hibaakel24@gmail.com

Michal Weiss – PhD student (Haifa University Committee for Research Students)

BSc Psychobiology, MSc Brain Research

Michal completed her Bachelor’s in Psychobiology at the Hebrew University and her Master’s in Brain Research at Bar Ilan University. Her Master’s research focused on theoretical concepts of modulating effect of tdcs and its influence on attentional load.

Michal is interested in how biology and psychology interact to form emotion and behavior. She is passionate about understanding complex systems and in translating basic scientific concepts to clinical solutions. She has an extensive experience in working with R&D teams on digital healthcare systems, serving as a scientific analyst and product specialist in several startups.

Since she joined the Integrative Pain Laboratory in September 2020, Michal is leading the Pain Radar project. This interdisciplinary project, in collaboration with professor Haick (Technion), aims to develop a Fibromyalgia signature and a monitoring tool for chronic pain based on cutting-edge biochemical techniques and physiological tools.

Email: Michalweiss87@gmail.com

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Keren Pollak - PhD student in Public Health (MPH)

Keren completed her first PhD in Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Haifa. During her research she developed a GIS-Based forecasting model that uses transportation and spatial parameters in order to assess the vulnerability of highway segments.

She has got major industry experience in the fields of business & system analysis (Spatial and ERP), characterization and development of BI systems for finance. She has also got practice in Remote sensing, Spectral data analysis & modeling and GIS (Geographic Information Systems).

Since she joined the Integrative Pain Laboratory (iPainlab), she has been investigating temporal fluctuations of chronic pain, depression, and anxiety comorbidity in real-life settings. In addition, Keren is developing a predictive linguistic model of pain and mental health, applying computational approaches based on Natural Language Processing (NLP).

Email: keren.pollak@gmail.com

Boris Boltyansky – Master student in Public Health (MPH), Biostatistics track

BSc Computer Science, BSc Biology, MSc Neurobiology

Email: bboltyan@campus.haifa.ac.il

Boris completed his Bachelor’s in Computer Science and Biology at the University of Haifa and his Master’s in Neurobiology at the University of Haifa as well. His Master’s research focused on neuropathic pain processing in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus.

Since he joined the Integrative Pain Laboratory on January 2021, Boris is in charge of the PainStory project. The project aims to develop a digital platform for pain detection, based on facial expressions, voice and inferred language content.

Boris leads the technological effort of platform establishment, along with subsequent development of cloud-based machine learning algorithms for feature extraction and data analysis. As part of his research, Boris uses collected data to develop novel pain measures that go beyond the standard self-report assessment.

Hadeel Salmeh – Master student in Public Health

I completed my BS.c in Biology at Tel Aviv University. I am now a Master’s student in Public Health specializing in Health Promotion at Haifa University.

I am interested in how our brain controls our body by chemicals and how these chemicals impact our behaviors, emotions, and thoughts. Moreover, I am excited to explore how we can control chemicals to rewire our brain.

I joined the integrative Pain Laboratory in September 2021, and am currently a part of the team working on the Pain Radar project. This project aims to develop a Fibromyalgia signature and multidimensional biomarkers based on biochemical and neurophysiological signature.

Email: hadeelsalmeh5@gmail.com

Amneh Shmali Asly – Master student in Public Health (MPH), Biostatistics track

Amneh completed her Bachelor’s in Audiology and Speech Language Pathology (SLP) at the University of Haifa in 2015. Works as Speech Language Pathologists and is a researcher in the iPainLab with Dr. Pavel Goldstein.

Amneh joined the Integrative Pain Laboratory in September – 2021 and will take part in the Pain Story Project, the project aims to develop a digital platform for pain detection, based on facial expressions, voice and inferred language content. Her master’s research focuses on predicting pain based on the patient’s recorded narratives.

Email: amneh-shmali@hotmail.com

Natalya Polyvyannaya - PhD student

Master of Social Science in Psychology.

Specialization of practice in dance-movement and body-oriented non-clinical psychotherapy.

Interests in science: creativity, well-being, stress, chronic pain, psychological interventions.

Got bachelor’s as Psychologist, instructor of Physical Therapy/massages, teacher of Foreign Languages and graduate degree as engineer of Electronical Systems.

Worked as graphical designer, psychologist, and lecturer of Psychology in English and teacher of different stuff.

Passionate about Authentic Movement, somatic practices, touch therapies and stuff.

Email: natpolymat@gmail.com

Kateryna Trushik - Project Manager

Kateryna Trushyk is the project manager of “Ukraine without chronic pain”.

Kateryna is a journalist, author, presenter and producer of radio and TV programs. She received a Master’s Degree in Journalism from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.

For 22 years she worked for major TV channels and radio stations in Ukraine.

She came up with rating projects, gathered cool teams that under her leadership successfully implemented these projects.

In Ukraine, Kateryna is involved in well-known and famous clinics as well as state institutions in the field of medicine and health that cooperate with her.

In Israel, Kateryna is actively engaged in social and charitable activities, organizes and conducts events to support Ukraine refugees.

Email: katerintru@gmail.com

Thalia Richter

Thalia Richter, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Project Manager

Thalia has completed her direct-track PhD in Psychology at the School of Psychological Sciences, University of Haifa. Her dissertation, titled “A novel cognitive-based diagnostic support-system: Using machine-learning analysis for diagnosis of anxiety and depression”, is a translational study that reflects her desire to combine the clinical field with multidisciplinary research bridging cognitive and clinical psychology with computer sciences.

Thalia completed her clinical training during her PhD studies, and is now a certified clinical psychologist.

In addition to her work in the iPainLab, she is also a postdoctoral fellow at the Emotion-Cognition Interaction laboratory, headed by Prof. Hadas Okon-Singer, where she studies cognitive approaches to psychopathology, focusing on cognitive biases in anxiety and depression, and develops cognition-based interventions and diagnostic tools.

Email: thalia.richter173@gmail.com

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Rand Mokatren, Research Assistant

Rand is a final year dual major student in human services and cognitive sciences, a research assistant as part of a final project course , she wants to examine heart rate variability and depression levels in chronic pain patients.
And the question of her project is what are the temporal dynamics between depression and HRV in chronic pain patients.
In addition, she is doing an internship as HR in the human resources department at a high-tech company called TLVtech, and she aspires to study a master’s degree in statistics.

Email: rand16shibli@gmail.com

Shaden Zein Aldeen, Research Assistant

I am a BA student in Psychology and Cognitive Science at the University of Haifa. Currently I’m working on my final project in Cognitive Science as a part of the PDA project. My final project focuses on investigating the temporal dynamics between sleep quality, depression and anxiety in patients with chronic pain.

In addition, I’m working on my final project in Psychology as a part of a cooperative research project between professor Yafa Yeshurun and professor Ahmad Abu Akel from the department of Psychology in the University of Haifa. The project aims to examine the association of the ability to perceive visual stimuli with behavioural tendencies towards autistic or psychosis traits.

Email: Zeinaldeenshaden@gmail.com