Prof. Shulamit Michaeli

Prof. Shulamit Michaeli is a world-renowned scientist and researcher in the field of RNA microbiology and biology and has published more than one hundred and thirty articles in scientific journals and books cited in thousands of publications. Prof. Michaeli is an expert in the field of RNA research and has pioneered the use of nanotechnology for developing drugs for infectious diseases and cancer. Prof. Michaeli has registered several important technological patents and has won many prestigious awards and grants. Prof. Michaeli has been Vice President for Research at Bar-Ilan University since 2017 after occupying other senior positions, including Dean of the Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences and the Founding Director of the Nano-Medicine Center at the Bar-Ilan Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials (BINA). Also, over the years, Professor Michaeli has been a member of various scientific committees and has collaborated with scientists from leading European research institutions.

Prof. Michaeli focuses on the study of Trypanosomatid parasites, which cause serious infectious diseases that affect millions of people around the world. She has recently won, together with researchers from the Institut Pasteur in France and the Weizmann Institute of Science, a large grant from the European Research Council (ERC) for investigating the biological mechanisms of the Leishmania parasite, which causes the "Jericho Buttons" disease, Leishmaniasis. Her research is intended to unveil the parasite’s behavior under stress and under pharmaceutical treatment, which could lead to the development of effective treatments and prevent the development of drug resistance. 

Prof. Michaeli is a qualified microbiologist and has a bachelor's degree in biology from Tel Aviv University, from which she continued on a direct path to a PhD. She did her postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley, and the San Francisco School of Medicine. Upon the end of her studies, she returned to Israel and joined the staff at the Weizmann Institute of Science, where she was awarded the Clore Prize, which is intended for outstanding young researchers, and the André Lwoff Prize, which is awarded by the French Academy of Sciences. After 7 years at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Prof. Michaeli joined the staff at Bar-Ilan University where she continues her groundbreaking research and important managerial work.