Omar Hafez

Omar Hafez is an MD-PhD student in the Departments of Neuroscience and Cellular & Molecular Physiology at Yale School of Medicine. He earned his B.S. in neuroscience with a minor in mathematics from the Johns Hopkins University in 2019.

At Johns Hopkins, Omar’s research emphasized applying quantitative approaches to understand how cellular and molecular biophysics shape neuronal function in health and disease. Working with Professor Allan Gottschalk, MD, PhD, Omar researched episodic ataxia type 1, a disorder caused by mutations to the voltage-gated potassium channel Kv1.1. He used methods from dynamical systems mathematics to investigate how these channelopathies produce enhanced neuronal excitability in affected patients (Journal of Computational Neuroscience, 2020).

Additionally, Omar has studied mechanisms of information processing underlying olfactory learning in Drosophila. Alongside experimentalist collaborators, he constructed a biophysically realistic computational model of a central memory module for associative learning to examine the cellular basis for memory encoding and decision making (eLife, 2023; advisor: Professor Ernst Niebur, PhD).

As an MD-PhD student, Omar is now pursuing his graduate studies in the lab of Dr. Rui Chang. He is interested in the pathways that connect the brain and peripheral organs, the neural substrates that sense internal states and respond to changes in body physiology, and the diseases that result when these systems are disrupted. Outside of science and medicine, Omar enjoys hiking, playing double bass, and his cats.