Dr. Stéfan du Plessis is a clinician scientist who specializes in MRI neuroimaging with related software and hardware development and has over ten years of experience in the field. He received his MBChB from Stellenbosch University in 2005. In 2019 he completed his PhD, where he investigated the impact of HIV on brain function and its relationship with frontal atrophy using structural as well as functional MRI. Dr. du Plessis then went on to study reward functioning in Parkinson’s disease and its relationship with neurogenetics. He recently completed the Master of Engineering Science in Biomedical Engineering programme, passed with distinction, where he developed a hardware-based biofeedback system for use in Virtual Reality.
Dr. du Plessis is experienced in the use of functional MRI in a wide range of tasks as well as in resting states. He also uses research-based DTI and sMRI, utilizing advanced segmentation algorithms, machine learning, and graph-based analyses. He is proficient in MATLAB, C programming, High-Performance Computing, Unreal-based visual scripting as well as additional basic facility in C++.
Dr. du Plessis currently serves as a neuroimaging consultant/researcher at the Department of Psychiatry, Stellenbosch University. His current interests are stress sensitivity in schizophrenia and the general population, where he explores potential fear exposure-based therapy in Virtual Reality. He is also affiliated with and actively contributes to the ENIGMA and PGC international brain imaging consortiums.