Prof. Karen Avraham

Prof. Karen B. Avraham, Ph.D. is the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University and holds the Drs. Sarah and Felix Dumont Chair for Research of Hearing Disorders. She heads the Laboratory of Neural and Sensory Genomics in the Department of Human Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry and is affiliated with the Sagol School of Neuroscience and Safra Center for Bioinformatics. Prof. Avraham leads the effort in the discovery of disease genes and the use of models for therapy, with an emphasis on precision medicine. She has over 150 publications in international journals and has mentored over 130 undergraduate, MSc, PhD, MD-PhD students and post-docs. She was founding director of the Healthy Longevity Research Center and of the Aufzien Family Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Parkinson’s Disease at Tel Aviv University. Prof. Avraham founded and leads the Tel Aviv University M.Sc. program in Medical Sciences with a specialty in Genetic Counseling. Prof. Avraham was awarded, among others, the TEVA Prize for Groundbreaking Research in Rare Diseases, the Teva Founders Prize on Breakthroughs, and most recently, the FISEB STAR Award for Scientific Excellence and Leadership. She has been a visiting scholar at the Harvard Medical School and the University of Washington in Seattle. Prof. Avraham was recently appointed to the Faculty of Scholars of the Human Genome Organization, is an elected member of EMBO and of the Collegium Oto-Rhino-Laryngologicum Amicitiae Sacrum (CORLAS). She is a founding member of the International Society for Inner Ear Therapeutics (ISIET), a member of the Lancet Commission on Hearing Loss and of the CureGRIN Scientific Advisory Board.