Prof. Zalsman graduated from the Hebrew University and Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem, Israel. He completed his psychiatry residency at the Geha MHC and Tel Aviv University and the Child Psychiatry residency at Geha and then at Yale Child Study Center in Yale University, USA.
He completed a two-year Post-Doctoral Fellowship with Prof. J John Mann, in the Division of Molecular Imaging and Neuropathology, Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, USA, where he holds an ongoing position as an Adjunct Research Scientist. He also holds a Master degree MHA (summa cum laude) from Ben Gurion University, Israel. His academic research focuses on suicidal behavior, gene-environment interactions in childhood depression and suicidal behavior and other psychiatric disorders in adolescence. Currently he is the CEO and Medical Director of Geha Mental Health Center near Tel Aviv in addition to being the director of the Adolescent Day Unit. He is Full Professor and Chair of the Psychiatry Department at Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University. He is the past board member and president of the child psychiatry section at the Association of European Psychiatry. Currently he is the chair of education at the executive committee of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology and the past president of the Israeli Society of Biological Psychiatry. He chaired the 14th European Symposium for Suicide and Suicidal Behavior and Co-Chaired the IASR/AFSP annual suicide summit in Las Vegas, 2017.