ABOUT ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR ALEX BAHAR-FUCHS

Dr Alex Bahar-Fuchs is a clinician and researcher dedicated to understanding and optimising cognitive ageing. As a researcher, he conducts cutting-edge studies with his global network of collaborators aimed at designing and evaluating better cognition-based treatments for older adults with and without cognitive impairment. As a clinician, he works closely with clients to develop, deliver, monitor and evaluate personalised interventions to improve or maintain cognition, function, and wellbeing.

Dr Bahar-Fuchs is an experienced clinical neuropsychologist and an Associate Professor in the Academic Unit for Psychiatry of Old Age, Department of Psychiatry, the University of Melbourne. He is a recognised international expert on cognition-oriented treatments (COTs) for older adults. His research in this area has been published in leading academic journals, is frequently cited (See full list on Google Scholar), and has had an impact on clinical practice guidelines in Australia and abroad.

Alex graduated from Ben-Gurion University in southern Israel in 2002 with a Bachelor of Behavioural Sciences and shortly afterwards moved to Australia where he completed postgraduate training in Psychology at the University of Melbourne and graduated with PhD in clinical neuropsychology from Monash University in 2009. Between 2009 and 2011, Alex worked in a range of hospital settings throughout Melbourne, furthering his experience as a neuropsychologist working with diverse populations, patients and settings such as outpatient neurology, acquired brain injury rehabilitation, and aged-care assessment and management.

Seeking to expand his knowledge beyond neuropsychology, Alex then completed postdoctoral training in Public Health in the Research School of Population Health at the Australian National University in Canberra. Supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, in 2014 Alex relocated to Israel, where he went on to complete further research training at the Joseph Sagol Neuroscience Centre at Sheba Medical Centre, Israel’s largest hospital and medical research facility.​

Alex returned to Melbourne in 2016 and joined the Academic Unit for Psychiatry of Old Age at the University of Melbourne, where he is currently an Associate Professor, and co-heads the Cognitive Interventions, Technologies, and Evaluations (CITE) research group (with Dr Amit Lampit). He serves on several committees and has held a number of leadership positions over the years, including as founding chair of the CIDER International Working Group, and chair of the Non-Pharmacological Interventions Interest Group of the US Alzheimer’s Association (2016-2019). Alex currently serves on the board of the Victorian branch of the College of Clinical Neuropsychologists, the Australian Friends of the University of Tel-Aviv, and of the International Society to Advance Alzheimer’s Research and Treatment. Alex has been awarded several prestigious prizes grants and awards, including a Churchill Fellowship and his work has been supported by the National Health & Medical Research Council (NHMRC), and Dementia Australia. To date, Alex has attracted over $7 Million in research funding from government and non-government funding bodies in Australia, USA, and Israel. For a full list of Alex’s grants and awards, click here.

Alex’s primary interest is the optimisation of cognitive ageing, or the preservation of thinking and cognitive processes and associated functions in later years. His research program focuses on designing and evaluating novel treatments, the use of emerging technologies such as virtual-reality, and mobile applications to deliver and evaluate treatments, as well as on synthesising large amounts of evidence and translating it to clinical practice.