Speakers

Noam Shomron Professor, Tel Aviv University

Prof. Shomron has received his Bachelors degree in Biotechnology at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia; his Masters degree in Gene Therapy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; and his graduate studies in Genetics at Tel Aviv University where he worked on regulatory RNA systems. As a Post-Doctorate affiliate at MIT in Cambridge, USA, Prof. Shomron gained expertise in combining high-throughout data with computational analysis in order to decipher gene regulation in health and disease. Today Prof. Shomron heads the Functional Genomics Laboratory at Tel Aviv University’s Medical School, as well as heading the Rare Genomics Institute - Israel. Prof. Shomron’s team explores regulation of gene expression mainly by small RNAs in order to reach a global, systems view of the mechanistic roles they play in health and disease.

Chase Broedersz Professor, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich

Chase Broedersz graduated from VU Amsterstam (PhD and PostDoc Theoretical Physics). He was a lecturer at Princeton University as Lewis-Sigler Theory fellow from 2011 to 2015. Since 2015 Chase Broedersz is a professor of Theoretical Physics - Statistical and Biological Physics at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.

Amelie Heuer Jungemann Postdoc, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich

Amelie Heuer Jungemann graduated from Heriot-Watt University (Chemistry with Biochemistry) and the University of Southampton (PhD Physics/Bionanotechnology) focused on biomedical applications of DNA-coated nanoparticles. Then she was a PostDoc at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, working on the development of 3D DNA origami crystals as well as DNA origami-Silica hybrid Nanomaterials. In 2020 she opened her own research group as Emmy Noether fellow in Munich working on DNA origami.

Yuval Ebenstein Professor, Tel Aviv University

Yuval Ebenstein studied chemistry and physics at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel, where he also completed his Ph.D. in physical chemistry with Prof. Uri Banin, studying the photophysical properties of individual semiconductor nanocrystal quantum dots (QDs). He then moved to work as a postdoc with Prof. Shimon Weiss at UCLA where he used QDs to light-up individual DNA binding proteins and map them along bacteriophage genomes. In the summer of 2011 he set-up the NanoBioPhotonix Lab in the department of chemical physics, school of chemistry at Tel Aviv University.

Ben Maoz Professor, Tel Aviv University

Ben Maoz is a faculty member in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, and Sagol School of Neuroscience at Tel Aviv University. Dr. Maoz accomplished his Ph.D in Chemistry in Tel Aviv University under the supervision of Prof. Gil Markovich. Dr. Maoz returned to Israel after completing his post-doctoral fellowship at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University, under the supervision of Prof. Don Ingber and Prof. Kit Parker. Dr. Maoz's current research focuses on developing new methods for studying human physiology, focusing on the brain. These new tools, known as Organs-on-a-Chip, provide a conceptually new way of studying human physiology by which the organ functionality is mimicked in a microfluidic chip by using human cells. This concept enables us to tackle fundamental questions on human physiology without the need to work with human beings. The Maoz lab develops and implements this methodology in order to study complex human systems.

Lior Arazi Professor, Ben Gurion University of the Negev

Dr. Lior Arazi is a senior lecturer in the Unit of Nuclear Engineering at Ben-Gurion University, focusing on two very distinct aspects of ionizing radiation: the use of alpha particles for the treatment of solid tumors (Alpha-DaRT), and the development of new concepts for radiation detection and imaging in nuclear, particle and astroparticle physics experiments. He did his PhD in Tel Aviv University in applied nuclear physics under the supervision of Prof. Itzhak Kelson, where he co-invented and developed the Alpha-DaRT concept. He then moved to the Weizmann Institute for a postdoctoral fellowship on radiation detection physics. He is a member of the NEXT experiment searching for neutrinoless double beta decay and the DARWIN collaboration developing a future multi-ton liquid xenon dark matter detector.

Haim Suchowski Professor, Tel Aviv University

Prof. Haim Suchowski's research focuses in exploring ultrafast dynamics in condensed matter physics, plasmonic nanostructures, silicon photonics and 2D materials. Also, he conducts research in quantum coherent control of atoms and molecules with ultra-short laser pulses. He is leading experimental research on nonlinear generation processes, metamaterials, including nonlinear optics from nanostructures and metasurfaces. In quantum coherent control, he performs experimental realization of coherent control schemes in various physical systems: atomic physics, frequency conversion, polarization optics, and silicon photonics. He also performs theoretical research on a Lie-algebraic approach to strong-field coherent control.

Nissim Peretz , Tel Aviv University

Tal Dvir Professor, Tel Aviv University

Prof. Dvir obtained a B.Sc. (2003) and a Ph.D (2008) degrees in Biotechnology Engineering from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. His Ph.D research was supervised by Prof. Smadar Cohen and focused on cardiac tissue engineering and regeneration. Prof. Dvir continued his postdoctoral studies in the laboratory of Prof. Robert Langer in the Department of Chemical Engineering at MIT. His postdoc research focused on nanotechnological strategies for engineering complex tissues. On October 2011 Prof. Dvir was recruited by the Department of Biotechnology and the center for Nanotechnology at Tel Aviv University to establish the Laboratory for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine. On 2013, Prof. Dvir has also joined the newly established Department of Materials Science and Engineering at TAU. Since November 2015, Tal is an Associate Prof. at the Department of Biotechnology.

Omar Saleh Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara

Professor Omar A. Saleh is a physicist and materials scientist with broad expertise in biomolecular and polymer science. Saleh received his B.S. in Physics from MIT in 1997, and his Ph.D. in Physics from Princeton in 2003. His graduate studies were supported by a Hertz Fellowship. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, France, where he developed single-molecule experimental techniques to study motor protein/DNA interactions. He came to UC Santa Barbara in 2005, where he is now a full professor in the Materials Department, with a minority appointment in the Biomolecular Science and Engineering (BMSE) Program. He served as Director of the BMSE program from 2013 to 2017, and was an elected member of the Executive Committee of the Division of Biological Physics of the American Physical Society from 2013 to 2016. His research is focused on the molecular physics underlying biological systems, with particular experience in nucleic acids, protein/DNA interactions, motor proteins, biomolecular elasticity, and self-assembled biomolecular systems. His research achievements were recognized by an NSF CAREER award in 2008, by a Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Society in 2017, and by his selection as a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2019 by the Division of Biological Physics.

Artem Danilevsky PhD Student, Tel Aviv University

Artem is a PhD student at Tel Aviv University

Ram Avnery Postdoctoral Researcher, Georgia Institute of Technology

Ram is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Georgia Institute of Technology, studying the Physics of Robotic Collectives