Lab Members- Alumni – Integrative Pain Laboratory

Alumni Lab Members

Jasmin Kroll – Post-doctoral Fellow in Public Health

The main focus of Jasmin’s clinical and research experience has been on psychiatric disorders with an emphasis on psychosis and personality disorders. She also spent time teaching on the subjects of applied neuroscience and psychiatric illness. Jasmin’s PhD focussed on delineating a cognitive and psychiatric profile of individuals born very preterm. Here, she aimed to identify neonatal and neurocognitive biomarkers for psychiatric outcomes with an emphasis on psychosis. She was also involved in a prospective study of children born preterm, utilising neuroimaging, neuropsychology and clinical assessments to identify typical and atypical behavioural trajectories

Jasmin joined the Integrative Pain Laboratory in January 2021; she is in charge of the TrainPain project. This project aims to examine the feasibility and effectiveness of a gamified sensory perceptual training programme for patients with fibromyalgia. Jasmin will oversee all aspects of this project including the study design, ethical process, assessments and data analysis.

Email: Jasmin.kroll@kcl.ac.uk

Sewar Kahtib – Master student in Public Health, Health Administration track (MHA)

Sewar completed her Bachelor’s in Occupational Therapy Sciences at the University of Haifa.

Works as the director of the occupational therapy service at a geriatric nursing hospital and is a researcher in the iPainLab with Dr. Pavel Goldstein. Her master’s research focuses on investigating the effect of the multisensory environment and the social support, through Snoezelen room therapy on the general physical and emotional health and life satisfaction, upon the elderly patients living in nursing homes, in order to maximize the quality of life and mental well-being of the adult population living in nursing homes.

In addition to being fascinated by the study of the effects of sensory stimulation on general health and wellbeing, she really enjoys traveling around the world, surfing, cooking, and spending quality time with her family and friends.

Email: skhate13@campus.haifa.ac.il

Lisa KALY– Master student in Public Health (MPH), Biostatistics track

Lisa is a Rheumatologist, affiliated to the Israeli Rheumatology Society and to Technion Rappaport Faculty of medicine. She works at Bnai Zion Medical Center as a senior Rheumatologist and at Maccabi health care. Part of her daily practice is to manage chronic pain and fibromyalgia. She also specialized in musculoskeletal ultrasound, a wonderful tool that helps her to distinguish organic pathologies from chronic pain syndrome. She is actually studying for a master degree in Public Health (Biostatistics track) in the University of Haifa.

She joined the Interactive Pain Laboratory in January 2021 as a medical consultant, willing to improve the diagnostic accuracy in fibromyalgia as well as lift up the management of this chronic disorder.

Email: lisakaly@yahoo.fr

Dmitry Scherbakov - Post-doctoral Fellow in Public Health

Dmitry has completed his PhD in Media Studies at Russian State University for the Humanities. In his PhD work he applied traditional and computer based methods to analysis of texts. He was able to show that media reputation of the left-wing writer N.G. Chernyshevsky is cyclic in nature as manifested in different types of media from old journals to internet discussion boards.

He was working for 10+ years in software industry parallel to his research and has gained expertise in RStudio data science platform, as well as in making powerful demos of the solutions he was in charge of.

Dmitry’s role in the Integrative Pain Laboratory (iPainlab) will be to conduct machine learning analysis of texts and numerical data coming from social media of chronic pain patients, surveys and digital platforms. The resulting data models will be used to improve existing diagnostic tools available to doctors. He will also work on the creation of therapeutic chat-bot which will help patients assess and treat their pain.

Email: dshcherba@staff.haifa.ac.il

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

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

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

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

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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