Home / Research Grants and Awards
Zuckerman Scholars at the forefront of their research disciplines receive prestigious research grants, awards and honors. Anchored in excellence, these accolades permit our scholars to amplify their research, facilitate collaboration and establish themselves as leaders in their fields.
Since 2018 41% of Zuckerman faculty scholars and alumni have received ERC funding totaling €28.74M.
Consolidator
Starter
ERC grants are awarded annually through open competition to starting and established researchers, with scientific excellence being the sole criterion. It is considered the most prestigious science award in Europe.
Israel ranks number two in the world for the total of ERC grants won by scientists
According to the ERC, between 2007 and 2021, Israel had the second-highest number of ERC grant recipients, a reflection of Israel’s continued commitment to excellence in academic research. We are extremely proud of our Zuckerman Scholars included in that number.
Zuckerman ERC Grant Recipients 2018 – 2024
Danny Ben-Zvi
Zuckerman Faculty Scholar, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem-Hadassah Medical School
Awarded ERC’s Proof of Concept Grant for his work on preserving muscle and bone mass during weight loss.
The Ben-Zvi Lab focuses on understanding how bariatric (weight loss) surgery impacts all systems in the body, with the goal of discovering how to achieve its positive effects without surgical intervention, potentially leading to a cure for type-2 diabetes, and reversing obesity.
To be eligible for a PoC grant, researchers must be prior recipients of an ERC Frontier Research Grant. Dr. Ben-Zvi was awarded an ERC Starting Grant in 2018.
Nadav Cohen
Zuckerman Israeli Postdoctoral (Alum), Tel Aviv University
Dr. Cohen’s Foundations of Deep Learning lab studies the theoretical and algorithmic foundations of neural networks (NNs) for control (i.e., for reinforcement learning). NNs are the driving force behind the ongoing AI revolution, and control is one of the most powerful and challenging AI frameworks. Currently, the implementation of NNs for control is predominantly heuristic, hindering their use in application domains where safety, robustness and reliability are critical, e.g., manufacturing, aerospace and healthcare. The lab harnesses specialized mathematical tools and insights drawn from practical experience to develop foundations enabling safe, robust and reliable deployment of NNs for control in such critical domains.
Ariella Glasner
Zuckerman Faculty Scholar, Technion
For elucidating the networks of immune stromal connections by Perturbation of Immunity in Cancer – towards developing novel therapeutic strategies.
Ariella Glasner researched two types of immune cells in cancers during her studies: an innate lymphocyte known as a natural killer cell (NK), because it eradicates tumors and virally infected cells, and a suppressor regulatory T-cell (Treg), which plays a major role in shaping the development of various cancers. Treg cells‘ canonic function is the suppression of immune responses, but they also participate in tissue repair and regeneration. Dr. Glasner observed these cells in various biological contexts, focusing first on basic mechanisms that regulate activity, then zooming in on their roles in the tumor microenvironment (TME). The lab aims to comprehensively map the entire spectrum of interactions between immunocytes and the TME, which plays a crucial role in supporting the tumor, by identifying negative and positive tumor regulator programs, studying localization mediated effects, and mapping the genetic and epigenetic mediators that take part in the immune-TME interplay.
Tal Iram
Zuckerman Israeli Postdoctoral (Alum), Weizmann Institute of Science
Dr. Iram’s lab seeks to understand the mechanistic basis of how oligodendrocyte lineage cells age and functionally relate this to cognitive aging, loss of regenerative capacity and neurodegenerative diseases. The lab primarily uses mouse models and employ molecular biology, dynamic metabolic labeling tools, RNA sequencing and behavioral tests.
Yaniv Romano
Zuckerman Israeli Postdoctoral (Alum), Technion
Dr. Romano’s lab research spans theory and practice of statistical inference and machine learning including: Reproducibility in science, leveraging state-of-the-art techniques in machine learning and selective inference to make new replicable discoveries. Prediction with confidence, by developing methodologies for distribution-free uncertainty estimation that work with any complex predictive algorithm, such as neural nets and random forests. Equitable treatment, designing tools that can be wrapped around any recommendation system to produce unbiased measures of prediction uncertainty. Theory and practice of neural nets, by proposing and analyzing multi-layer convolutional sparse coding techniques and studying the stability of convolutional neural networks. Inverse problems, developing highly effective priors and algorithms for solving general image reconstruction problems.
Yaara Oren
Zuckerman Faculty Scholar, Tel Aviv University
The Oren Lab focuses on the study of a rare subpopulation of cancer cells, called persister cells, that can evade therapy through a non-mutational reversible mechanism. The lab combines clinical data, experimental and computational approaches to uncover the basic biology underlying the ability of cells to survive drug onslaught in the absence of a resistance-mediating genetic alteration. They develop new tools and systems to study reversible resistance in hope to pave the way for new therapeutic approaches that could prevent the emergence of genetic resistance.
Dekel Rosenfeld
Zuckerman Faculty Scholar, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering at Tel Aviv University
The Rosenfeld Lab develops magnetic functional materials to interact with electrogenic cells for neuromodulation and control over peripheral organ function. These tools allow remote control on calcium-dependent processes via activation of ion channels such as heat sensitive ion channels. It provides spatial and temporal resolution in a minimally invasive procedure demonstrated both in vitro and in vivo. They developed a novel approach to control the release of adrenal stress hormones to treat hormonal imbalance in mental health disorders such as post trauma stress disorder.
The lab’s ultimate goals are developing new tools that advance the biomedical research to repair organ dysfunction and studying the organ-brain communication in health and disease.
Yoav Shechtman
Zuckerman Faculty Scholar, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
The ERC special grant award is intended to promote the translation of academic research into application and commercialization, including the establishment of the start-up company. This grant is only given to researchers who have already won ERC grants in the past.
The grant was given for the development of a sensitive measurement of protein concentration using computational microscopy. The researchers developed a simple and fast method for measuring the concentration of certain proteins from body fluid samples, for example blood.
The method is based on a microscope with the addition of an optical component designed in Prof. Shechtman’s laboratory, which observes fluorescent particles (phosphorus) that adhere to the protein being studied using antibodies. The filmed videos are processed on a computer and the protein concentration is algorithmically extracted.
This method is in the testing stages for monitoring proteins of the immune system in treated cancer patients, for the purpose of early detection of side effects, with the aim of enabling preventive treatment, in collaboration with the Rambam Medical College.
Neta Shlezinger
Zuckerman Faculty Scholar, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Shlezinger Lab studies fungal pathogenesis and immune responses and uses a multidisciplinary approach to address two broad questions: what are the mechanisms that enable fungi to overcome immune surveillance and cause infectious diseases and, conversely, how the host immune response can protect against fungal pathogens. The projects in the lab address common questions in pathogenesis and immunology at the molecular, cellular and whole-organism level. One of their main research projects focuses on viruses of fungi (mycoviruses). Mycoviruses have been implicated in modified fungal virulence, but our knowledge of the underlying mechanisms is scarce. They recently published an opinion article on this project, which is pending an ERC starting grant (reserve list 2022). The lab generates functional reporters of fungal physiology and applies cross-disciplinary techniques to monitor the outcome of individual fungal cell-host encounters within the complexities of an in vivo environment.
Adi Ashkenazi
Zuckerman Israeli Postdoctoral Scholar alum (2017-2018), and Senior Lecturer at Tel Aviv University’s School of Physics and Astronomy
The neutrino lab focuses on estimating the impact of nuclear effects in neutrino experiments, coordinating an effort to leverage electron scattering data to benchmark models and improve neutrino event generators. The neutrino lab plans to produce a series of novel measurements that will improve current models used for neutrino interaction simulations to support the needs of the future DUNE experiment for oscillation precision measurements and New Physics searches.
Itamar Harel
Zuckerman Faculty Scholar, The Hebrew University’s Department of Genetics
Harel Lab explores the experimental biology of vertebrate aging and age-related diseases in an attempt to identify the molecular basis behind the outstanding lifespan diversity between different animals, and discover what separates disease from healthy aging. The lab employs cutting-edge techniques to develop a variety of disease models, including single-cell technology, mass spectrometry, and genome editing
Michal Ramot
Zuckerman Faculty Scholar, Weizmann Institute of Science’s Department of Neurobiology
Ramot Lab explores how different large-scale neural networks in the human brain, which integrate various cognitive domains, give rise to particular behaviors. The lab aims to develop the field of neurofeedback in the direction of clinical application and help clinicians to verify the causes of aberrant networks, and even to provide methods for rewiring brain networks to modulate neurological and psychiatric conditions and potentially enhance brain functions such as memory, learning, and perception.
Hadas Soifer
Zuckerman Faculty Scholar, Tel Aviv University’s School of Physics and Astronomy
Hadas Soifer Lab explores the possibilities of nonlinear optical phenomena in quantum materials to enable a better understanding of the coupling of light to topological band structures. It focuses in particular on photocurrent generation – where light absorbed in the material induces a current flow – which is of special promise for paving the way to optical quantum control of currents in devices and of interest from a spectroscopic point of view, enabling a better understanding of the coupling of light to topological band structures.
Gili Bisker
Zuckerman Faculty Scholar, Tel Aviv University’s Department of Biomedical Engineering
The Bisker Lab develops optical nano-sensors using optically active nanoparticles to analyze living systems, which provide both spatial and temporal information about biomolecular targets at the nanoscale. Dr. Bisker’s tools can enable long-term monitoring and imaging of biological samples, opening new opportunities for diagnostics and treatment.
Itay Tirosh
Zuckerman Faculty Scholar, Weizmann Institute of Science, Department of Molecular Cell Biology
The Tirosh Lab combines computational and experimental methods to study human tumors as a complex ecosystem in which diverse cancer and non-cancer cells interact and collectively determine tumor biology and response to therapies. The lab leverages single cell technologies, computational approaches, and clinical collaborations to analyze the diversity of cells within human tumors, and focuses on identifying important tumor subpopulations, such as cancer stem cells, drug resistant cells, invasive cells and immune cells that respond to immunotherapies. The researchers study cell function, regulation and vulnerabilities, with the ultimate goal of developing better cancer treatments.
Ido Goldstein
Zuckerman Faculty Scholar, The Hebrew University, Institute of Biochemistry, Food Science and Nutrition at the Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment
The Ido Goldstein Lab for Nutrigenomics, Liver Biology and Gene Expression researches the body’s response to periodic fasting, and explores ways to harness its benefits, which may extend to diseases such as diabetes, obesity, cancer, and Alzheimer’s. The lab investigates how liver cells program the expression of different genes in response to altered nutrition; how these programs are derailed in disease, and how we can re-establish them to restore health.
Moran Shalev-Benami
Zuckerman Faculty Scholar, Weizmann Institute of Science
The Shalev-Benami Lab focuses on visualizing the complex architectures of macromolecular assemblies, with the aim of learning how their complicated structures contribute to their ability to mediate cellular functions. Researchers use a combination of structural, biophysical and biochemical techniques with an emphasis on high-resolution electron cryo- microscopy (cryo-EM).
Omri Wurtzel
Zuckerman Faculty Scholar, Tel Aviv University, School of Neurobiolog, Biochemistry and Biophysics; affiliated with the Edmond J. Safra Center for Bioinformatics and the Sagol School of Neuroscience
The Wurtzel Lab for Regeneration and Stem Cell Biology studies the process of regrowing missing tissues. Following an injury, regenerative organisms activate molecular and cellular processes that lead to the formation of new tissues. The lab uses organisms that regenerate extremely quickly, working extensively with flatworms that can regrow any missing part of their bodies – including their brain – in less than a week.
Danny Ben-Zvi
Zuckerman Faculty Scholar, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem-Hadassah Medical School
The Ben-Zvi Lab focuses on understanding how bariatric (weight loss) surgery impacts all systems in the body, with the goal of discovering how to achieve its positive effects without surgical intervention, potentially leading to a cure for type-2 diabetes, and reversing obesity.
Yoav Shechtman
Zuckerman Faculty Scholar, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
Dr. Shechtman’s Nano-Bio Optics Lab develops novel microscopy tools that are applied to some of the most challenging imaging applications in biology, trying to observe life on the nanoscale. The lab’s interdisciplinary research encompasses biomedical engineering, optics, and biology; and develops both hardware and software tools to precisely track different sources on the nanoscale in three dimensions.
For the discovery of key sensing and signaling mechanisms in the brain that can be directly translated to precision medicine. Her work is informing the development of new therapeutics to treat appetite disorders and is exploring how light could be used to modify brain activity in living organisms.
Awarded a grant to fund her research on Fabry Disease, a rare genetic disorder that results in excessive deposits of lipids in the body’s tissues, increasing the risk of heart attack, stroke and kidney failure.
Awarded an EP PerMed Grant of $800,000 for her work as head of a consortium to develop a personalized heart on chip for patient-specific cardiac hypertrophy. She is also collaborating with in collaborating with partners from Hadassah Hospital in Israel, Germany and Finland to develop a novel drug to restore myocardial function.
For his research and significant contribution to understanding how internal states, such as aggression, are maintained at the neural and molecular levels over time. His research has the potential to inform studies on psychiatric illnesses that are characterized by dysregulated internal states, such as mood and anxiety disorders.
For his research on how waves behave in multimode fibers, exploring pathway to a new era of high-performance ultrafast lasers. With this research Dr. Sidorenko aims to design and build a laser where multiple transverse modes interact but aren’t locked together. This will be the first time this type of STML laser is demonstrated. It will also enable the generation of multiple frequency combs with different repetition rates.
Named “one of four trailblazing researchers who are spearheading some of the most innovative and compelling research at Tel Aviv University,” Dr. Bisker was recognized for her work developing optical nanosensors for detecting disease biomarkers and monitoring essential enzymatic activity. Her research seeks to enhance the properties of nanomaterials for sensing and imaging applications in biomedicine.
For his breakthrough in building a unique model based on the killifish, aiding in the development of new strategies to halt or delay the aging process.
For his unique contributions to the genetics research of hunger, understanding the dynamics of fasting and its breakdown, and its implications in metabolic diseases such as diabetes and obesity.
For his groundbreaking contributions in the field of data science, machine learning, and signal processing.
For significant contributions to the research of pathogenic fungi, understanding the mechanisms enabling them to overcome the body’s immune system, and developing innovative methods to defend against them.
For the development of optical sensors and understanding the physics of complex systems beyond thermodynamic equilibrium.
For the ability to capture direct images of molecules in action—images that, when pieced together, tell the captivating story of their function.
For his specialization in computational optical microscopy for imaging biological processes at the nanometer scale.
Received Open AI’s Bug Bounty Award for exposing a new privacy threat against AI assistants such as Chat GPT, that enables attackers to read encrypted messages sent over the internet. Dr. Mirsky provided vendors with a secure solution, and and actively worked with their engineers to verify the fix.
Itamar Harel admitted to the Young Academy of Europe, which creates dynamic scientific exchange and builds a network of top young researchers across a variety of fields throughout Europe.
Awarded a three-year grant of $1.1 million for her research on GRIN2B-related autism , Dr. Stern focuses on using RNA sequence analysis to identify the individual proteins and molecular pathways affected by GRIN2B pathogenic variants.
Mutations in the GRIN2B gene, which encodes brain receptors critical to learning and memory, can result in GRIN2B Related Neurodevelopmental Disorder, a devastating condition that can render children completely dependent on a caregiver.
The prestigious distinction features influential young Israelis who are making an impact on Israel and the world. Asst. Prof. Fischer’s research in sports biomechanics and clinical biomechanics with groundbreaking wearable devices for pain reduction and improved mobility have tremendous potential to change the healthcare sector. Fischer has worked with gold medal-winning olympic and para-olympic athletes to enhance their performance.
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