Members

Naama Geva-Zatorsky, Ph.D. –  Principal Investigator
naama_gz@technion.ac.il

Naama is combining systems-biology with microbiology and immunology to study the interactions between gut microbes and the host immune system in health and disease. She has characterized the host response to a variety of gut microbes and has applied a metabolic labeling approach to fluorescently label the anaerobic gut microbes. In addition, she is studying microbial genetic mechanisms that allow gut microbes to thrive the dynamic gut ecosystem and to co-op with bacteriophage. She is a recipient of the Alon Fellowship, the national and international UNESCO-L’Oreal award, the Human Frontiers fellowship, the EMBO fellowship, the John F. Kennedy Prize, the Teva Prize, and the Barenholz prize, for academic excellence. Naama received her B.Sc. from Tel Aviv University, double-majoring in Chemistry and Biology, with summa cum laude honors. Her M.Sc. and Ph.D., are from the Weizmann Institute, studying systems-biology of protein dynamics in cancer, with Prof. Uri Alon, completed with honors. Her postdoctoral training was at Harvard Medical School, studying gut microbiota-host interactions with Prof. Dennis Kasper.     

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Tal Gefen, Ph.D. –  Lab Manager
tal-avig@technion.ac.il 

Tal obtained his B.Sc. in Biotechnology from Tel-Hai Academic College. He then pursued consecutive secondary degrees, M.Sc. and Ph.D., both in Immunology from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Faculty of Agriculture. He continued to a postdoctoral position at the University of Miami, faculty of medicine in Eli Gilboas’ lab where he focused on cancer immunotherapy using Aptamer technology. He chose to join Naama in her endeavors as he was fascinated by the opportunity to help establish a new lab and hopes to contribute to the research.

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Tal Capucha, DMD-Ph.D. – Researcher
t_capusha@rmc.gov.il

Tal graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with a DMD-PhD degree. In his Ph.D. he studied the relationship between ontogeny and homeostasis of dendritic cells in the mucosa and the environment with an emphasis on the microbiome. He currently acts as a resident in the Maxillofacial Surgery Department at Rambam Health Care Campus. Tal joined Naama’s lab as a physician-scientist to study the combined role of the microbiota, and tumor-associated immune cells in development and prognosis of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.

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Haitham Hajjo – MD-Ph.D. Student
haythamhajjo@campus.technion.ac.il

Haitham is from the small village Deir Hanna located in the Galilee. He received his B.Sc. in Medical Science from the Technion Faculty of Medicine, with summa cum laude honors. He is part of the MD-PhD program and is studying the mutual interaction between the brain & gut microbiomes, working in collaboration with Asya Roll’s lab.

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Nadav Ben-Assa – MD-Ph.D. Student
nadavbe@campus.technion.ac.il

Nadav graduated from Tel-Aviv University with a B.Sc. in Chemistry and Biology. He then enrolled in the Medical school at the Technion. Currently, Nadav is working as an MD-PhD student in Naama’s lab. When Nadav learned that bacteriophages interact directly with the human body, he found it impolite not to interact back with them. Nadav is trying to find how the presence of certain bacteriophages affect and interact with the human immune system. Nadav believes that all bacteriophages, bacteria, and eukaryotes were created equal and hopes to find a peaceful solution to the eons-old conflict between them.

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Rawi Naddaf – MD-Ph.D. Student
rawi.naddaf@gmail.com

Rawi joined the lab after finishing his first degree in medical sciences from the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine in the Technion as part of his MD studies. He joined the lab to pursue a Ph.D. degree as part of the MD-Ph.D. program. He is currently studying the interactions between microbiome metabolites and cancer pathogenesis. In addition, he’s studying the volatomic profile of the bacterial species in the human gut microbiome and its interaction with the immune system. 

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Noa Mandelbaum – Ph.D. Student
noamandel@campus.technion.ac.il

Noa received her B.Sc. in Biochemical engineering from the Technion. She worked for a year as a Research and Development Assistant at Melcap, a medical device company,  and is currently volunteering in “Engineers Without Borders” at the Technion. Noa joined Naama’s lab to characterize bacterial-derived immunomodulatory molecules to understand their mechanistic interactions that have therapeutic potential.

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Shaqed Carasso – Ph.D. Student
scarasso@campus.technion.ac.il

Shaqed joined the lab after earning his first degree in Biology from the Technion. During his master’s degree in our lab, Shaqed studied fecal microbiota transplantations and phage therapy as treatment options for antibiotic-resistant bacteria carriage, focusing on the role of gut bacteria in mediating the treatments’ outcome. Looking forward, Shaqed will integrate ‘wet’ lab work with bioinformatic tools to explore how bacteriophages can influence gut bacteria functionality and take a closer look at the Bacteroides genus’ phase variation.

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Rawan Zaatry – Ph.D. Student
rawan.zaatry@campus.technion.ac.il

Rawan holds a Bachelor’s degree in Laboratory Medical Sciences from Hadassah College and a Master’s degree in Biochemistry from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. During her M.Sc., she worked on signal transduction pathways, using yeast as a tool to assess novel phosphorylation sites on human p38 MAPK.
She recently joined the Lab to pursue a PhD in microbiome research, a field that has long fascinated her.
Outside of the lab, Rawan enjoys playing sports, reading, being in the great outdoors and spending quality time with family and friends.

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Roni Keshet – Direct Ph.D. Student
Roni.keshet@campus.technion.ac.il

Roni received her B.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering from the Technion. She worked for two years as a support and testing student at MedicVision a medical imaging company developing enhancement tools for CT and MRI imaging, and worked there for another year as an QA engineer. She is a part of the excellence multidisciplinary program of the Rapaport faculty of medicine, and joined the NGZ lab to study how nutrition can affect inflammation via the microbiome, working in collaboration with Shai Shen-Orr’s lab.

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