Ilan Dinstein is a senior visiting research scientist for SFARI and a professor in the psychology and cognitive and brain sciences departments at Ben-Gurion University (BGU) in Israel. He received his Ph.D. from the Center for Neural Science at New York University in 2010 and then completed postdoctoral training in the neurobiology department at the Weizmann Institute and the Psychology Department at Carnegie Mellon University. He is the founding director of the Azrieli National Centre for Autism and Neurodevelopment Research (ANCAN) in Israel, which holds the National Autism Database of Israel with extensive data from over 2,500 children with ASD and their families.

Dinstein has an extensive track record of studying the function of sensory and motor systems in the human brain with a particular focus on autism and early development. He uses a variety of neuroimaging techniques including anatomical and function magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and EEG in combination with behavioral tools that include eye tracking, motion tracking, psychophysics, cognitive testing and standardized clinical assessments.

Since 2015, Dinstein has shifted his research focus towards developing new digital phenotyping techniques for measuring ASD symptom severity and outcomes using computer vision and speech analysis techniques as well as wearable devices. Recent studies apply deep learning techniques to large video, audio, eye tracking and sleep datasets to objectively identify and quantify ASD related behaviors and symptoms.