Prof. Jeffrey M. Hausdorff

Prof. Hausdorff received undergraduate and graduate degrees from The Cooper Union, MIT, and Boston University in biomechanics and biomedical engineering. After completing postdoctoral training in gerontology at Harvard Medical School, he joined the faculty there, first as an instructor and later as an assistant professor.  For the past 22 years, he has been directing a research center that studies gait, cognition, and mobility at the TelAviv Sourasky Medical Center. He has authored more than 340 peer-reviewed publications and has an H-index of 95. His research been funded by the NIH, the ISF, European Commission, and private agencies and has been widely recognized. He received the Gerontology Society of America’s Excellence in Rehabilitation of Aging Persons Award and was named a fellow of that society.

Prof. Hausdorff and the research team that he leads aim to better understand, evaluate, and treat gait, balance, cognitive function, and their changes with aging and disease. They study gait, motor control, and brain function, with a special focus on motor-cognitive interactions, gait variability, “fractal” physiology, falls in older adults, and freezing of gait. His research on the dependence of everyday walking on specific cognitive abilities lead to important new insights about fall risk and paved the way for new therapeutic approaches such VR-based interventions and the use of non-invasive brain stimulation. Innovative studies quantifying real-world mobility set the stage for a new way of evaluating gait and fall risk.