Dr Bechara Saab

As CEO of MI, I am committed to supporting my team in building digital tools that empower better living and faster healing. We blend science and design with internally developed technology that remotely and objectively measures mind and body data (typically via computer vision enabled psychobiometrics). By partnering with medical and academic institutions around the world, we rigorously interrogate the efficacy of our products through multi-centre randomised controlled trials. Our commitment of using science to ensure our tools work and are tailored to suit each individual means you can trust a MI product is the most effective product for you, no matter where you live or who you are.

Until 2017, I was a Principal Investigator of the Zurich Neuroscience Centre where my laboratory at the Psychiatry Hospital focused on understanding molecules and neural circuits that give rise to the motivation to explore. This work was a continuation of a discovery I made in 2009 while completing my PhD at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto in the lab of Prof. John Roder. We discovered a molecular link between environmental exploration and spatial learning, and in doing so observed an active role for the hippocampus in motivational behaviour. These results were recently extended by my lab and the labs of others to reveal roles of cortical and subcortical inputs to the hippocampus in novelty-driven exploration, research made possible by recent advancements in optogenetics in the freely behaving animal in combination with wireless electrophysiology, PET and fMRI. Together, this avenue of research has shed light on the mechanisms underscoring the intimate relationships between exploration, efficient learning and cognitive disease. At the circuit level, the importance of curiosity for healthy living may parallel the beneficial effects of mindfulness that MI delivers to its customers through the product AmDTx.

Throughout my career, I have been dedicated to science outreach and mentorship. I firmly believe that face-to-face interaction between researchers and students stands to benefit society on many levels. I was instrumental in establishing the Mount Sinai Hospital Outreach Program SciHigh, was Editor-in-Chief of Hypothesis, received the inaugural CIHR Award for Mentorship, represented Switzerland at Famelab 2012 and have been an invited as an speaker seven times to the world's longest-running Science Documentary Film Festival, AFO in the Czech Republic. I am an Overseas Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, a member of the Swiss Stress Network, Canadian nominee to the World Economic Forum as a "Future World Leader", Associate Editor at Frontiers in Psychology, and a member of the Society for Digital Mental Health.

As part of my work with MI, I thoroughly enjoy speaking at appropriate events of all sizes anywhere on Earth.