Eli Vakil


Eli Vakil is an Israeli clinical neuropsychologist. He is a professor emeritus and former departmental chairman of the Department of Psychology, and the head of the Memory and Amnesia Lab at the Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center at Bar-Ilan University. He also served as the director of the Rehabilitation Center for Veterans after Traumatic Brain-Injury in Jaffa, Israel.

Biography

In 1974–1976, Vakil studied at Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, graduating with a B.A. in psychology. He received his Ph.D. in clinical neuropsychology from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 1985.
His dissertation was titled: "Encoding of frequency of occurrence, temporal order, and spatial location information by closed-head-injured and elderly subjects: Is it automatic?"
Vakil is married with three children and lives in Ra'anana.

Clinical career

Vakil started his career as a clinical neuropsychologist working in rehabilitation with patients who had sustained severe head injuries. He worked at the Head Trauma Program at the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine in New York University Medical Center, and in the head of Recanati National Institute for the Rehabilitation of the head-injured person in Israel. and the director of the Rehabilitation Center for Veterans after Traumatic Brain-Injury in Jaffa, Israel. Chairman of the Psychology Department, Bar-Ilan University.
In the summer of 2017, he was a visiting scholar at the Kessler Foundation in West Orange, New Jersey.
Vakil was chairman of the rehabilitation psychology section in the Israeli Psychological Association.
He is a founding member of the Israeli Neuropsychological Society and has served as a board member of the International Neuropsychological Society.
Vakil has served on the INS board of governors, as an associate editor of the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society .
File:Eli Vakil INS Award.jpg|thumb|150px|Distinguished Career Award of the International Neuropsychological Society
In 2017 he received the Distinguished Career Award of the International Neuropsychological Society.
In 2019 he received the Distinguished Career Award by the Israeli Psychological Association – Rehabilitation Psychology.

Academic career

He is a professor emeritus and former departmental chairman of the Department of Psychology, and the head of the Memory and Amnesia Lab at the Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center at Bar-Ilan University.
Vakil has published extensively and presented at about 200 international scientific conferences, in the area of memory and memory disorders in various populations, such as traumatic brain injury patients, Parkinson’s disease patients, and the elderly.