A new researcher to St. Francis Xavier University is on the cutting edge of health technology. Dr. Jacob Levman's research is focused on healthy brain development and autism. He is expanding those research interests to include studying cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, migraine with aura and more.
Dr. Levman is the university’s new Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Bioinformatics in StFX's Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Department. The Canada Research Chair award is a Tier 2 valued at $500,000 over five years. He also received a Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) award.
Dr. Levman recently joined StFX from Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, where he completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in neuroscience under the supervision of Dr. Emi Takahashi.
Dr. Levman completed postdoctoral training in neuroimaging at the University of Oxford's Institute of Biomedical Engineering after finishing postdoctoral training in medical physics at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center. He completed his PhD in medical biophysics at the University of Toronto as well as a master's degree in electrical and computer engineering at Ryerson University and a bachelor's degree in computer engineering from the University of Waterloo. Dr. Levman also has extensive technical industry experience including working in Silicon Valley in California.
“StFX is a great school,” said Dr. Levman. “I love teaching and this might be the very best school in the country in this category.”
His research goals involve the intersection of computational technologies, statistical learning technologies, medical imaging technologies (MRI) and neuroscience. This involves large-scale studies that examine neuroimaging of large clinical populations and developing new technologies to assist in diagnosis and characterization of pathological conditions to improve patient care and to help elucidate understanding of a variety of neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism.
Dr. Levman and his family are excited about living in Canada again after years abroad in Boston and at the University of Oxford in England. “My family and I have long wanted to live in the countryside and Antigonish County provides some truly stunning nature for us. Antigonish is a great little town with lots of cool cultural events and very tasty restaurants.”
Dr. Levman started on November 28, 2016. He will maintain his role as Research Associate at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital and continue his affiliation with Massachusetts General Hospital.