Dr. Sherif's training and research integrate computational neuroscience, clinical psychiatry, and brain electrophysiology. He is originally from Egypt, where he was a practicing psychiatrist and neurologist at Ain Shams University, Cairo. He then did his psychiatry residency (again!) at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, Brooklyn, NY. He was the first to join the dual Residency/Ph.D. program at SUNY Downstate Medical Center/ NYU Tandon School of Engineering. His Ph.D. was under the supervision of Dr. William Lytton, one of the leaders in computational neuroscience and multiscale computer modeling of the brain. In his Ph.D., Dr. Sherif used biophysically-realistic computer models of the hippocampus to understand oscillatory changes in animal models of schizophrenia and investigate possible novel medication targets using mechanistic computer modeling approaches.
After his residency in Brooklyn, NY, Dr. Sherif was awarded the VA Special Psychopharmacology Research fellowship at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System and Yale University. Designing and conducting pharmaco-EEG clinical trials, Dr. Sherif became interested in the use of ketamine for the treatment of treatment-resistant depression. He was one of the psychiatrists running the ketamine clinic and ketamine research at the Connecticut VA. Dr. Sherif was awarded the VA career-development award (CDA-1) and the Leet Patterson Foundation grant to investigate EEG biomarkers of ketamine's antidepressant effects. He then joined Brown and Carney Institute.
