Jason Steffener’s research focuses on understanding how neuroplastic changes in brain activity maintain cognitive performance despite changes in brain structure and blood flow resulting from normal aging, disease or injury. He also studies how individual differences and lifetime exposures, e.g. education and physical activity, facilitate the adaptability of the brain.
Professor Steffener’s doctorate focused on signal processing, with a dissertation on olfactory processing in the brain using MRI. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in cognitive aging under the mentorship of Dr. Yaakov Stern at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) in New York City, USA. He stayed at CUMC as an assistant professor before coming to Concordia University in Montreal and then to the University of Ottawa.
Professor Steffener is accepting new students for thesis supervision.