Spotlight on Dr. Sherif Karama

Dr. Karama is a McGill-trained general psychiatrist with research training in brain imaging and genetics. He received his PhD in Neuroscience from the Université de Montréal. He completed a 15-month postdoctoral fellowship at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute in Behavioral Genetics as well as a five-year postdoctoral fellowship in Brain Imaging at the Montreal Neurological Institute.

He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at McGill.  His research is focused on gaining a better understand of the respective impacts that genes, environment, and their interaction have on brain development and the corollary consequences that these impacts can have on cognitive ability differences. He is also interested by how exogenous (e.g. smoking, early childhood adversity) and endogenous (e.g. neuroendocrine profiles) factors shape brain development and how these impact various aspects of behavior. Dr. Karama’s latest study, undertaken jointly with international scientists, found evidence confirming the link between changes in IQ and trajectory of cortical thickness development.

Dr. Karama is based at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute where he works in the Module d’Intervention Rapide. He is also an affiliated faculty member of the McConnell Brain Imaging Center of the Montreal Neurological Institute.  He holds an FRQS Clinical Research Scholar Junior 1 award (2012-2016).

“I am extremely fortunate to have the support of McGill’s Department of Psychiatry. The collegial atmosphere that it fosters allowed me to develop very close and fruitful collaborations with world-renowned leaders in their respective fields of research.” – Dr. Sherif Karama.