Dr. Sperber completed his MD studies at the Faculty of Health Sciences in Beer-Sheva Israel, and his residency in internal medical and fellowship in gastroenterology at the Soroka Medical Center in Beer-Sheva. He received a Master of Science in Public Health (MSPH) degree in Health Behavior and Health Education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1992. He worked in the Soroka Medical Center as a senior gastroenterologist responsible for the functional GI disorders until his retirement in 2009. He also worked as a family physician in a kibbutz for 10 years. He currently works as a part-time consultant for the Functional GI Unit in the Tel-Aviv Medical Center.

Dr. Sperber is Emeritus Professor of Medicine at Ben-Gurion University. He has served as preceptor for numerous medical students for their MD theses. Dr. Sperber developed and coordinated the gastroenterology systems course in the MD Program in International Health in association with Columbia University. He directed the clerkship in gastroenterology for Ben-Gurion medical students. In the field of health promotion Dr. Sperber initiated and headed the clean air campaign in the Soroka Medical Center in 1996, moderated courses and workshops in smoking cessation, and developed and directed a one year, continuing education course to train smoking cessation counselors. He was in charge of the Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Unit of the Faculty of Health Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Dr. Sperber was a member of the Rome III committee for Gender, Age, Society, Culture and the Patient�s Perspective. He chaired the committee that developed the Psychosocial slide set for the Rome Foundation�s Computer-Based Learning Program and co-authored the Functional Abdominal Pain Syndrome clinical algorithm with Dr. Douglas Drossman. He heads the Rome Foundation Translation Project for the dissemination of the Rome III questionnaires and clinical algorithms. He initiated and co-directed the joint AGA-IGA meeting on IBS that took place in Israel in February 2008 and is the initiator and co-director of the IBS-Global Perspective meeting scheduled for April 2011 in Milwaukee. Dr. Sperber�s research has focused on the epidemiology of IBS and other functional GI disorders, and on co-morbid conditions, in particular fibromyalgia and sleep disturbances in IBS. He has published on cross-cultural research and translation of study instruments for cross-cultural research. He published a book on IBS in Hebrew in Israel for the general population, which will be published in English by the IFFGD.