Dr. Neta Zuckerman
Email: neta.zuckerman@sheba.health.gov.il
Phone: 03-5307243
Position: Head of Bioinformatics and Genomics Center, Central Virology Laboratory
Research Interests:
- Clinical and environmental surveillance of pathogenic viruses of public health significance
- Molecular epidemiology of viral outbreaks
- Clinical and environemental metagenomic virome discovery
- gene expression studies to understand (neurotropic) viral infections
The bioinformatics and genomics center is situated within the central virology laboratory, which is Israel’s viral public health laboratory and Sheba hospital’s viral diagnosis laboratory. Our center is actively involved in the fields of diagnosis, research and development, employing advanced molecular and bioinformatics methods to sequence and investigate viruses in the diverse clinical and environmental specimen collected and stored at the lab. The center also plays a leading role within Israel’s ministry of health in sequencing and analysis of viruses associated with nationwide outbreaks and pandemics such as SARS-CoV-2, polio and measles. Our research interests span wide aspects of virology and public health, including metagenomic analyses of clinical and environmental virome discovery, molecular phylogenetics of viral outbreaks, investigation of resistance mutations and gene expression studies, all aimed at enhancing our understanding of viral infections and outbreaks.
Education:
Post doctorate, computational immunology, Stanford University School of Medicine, California, USA and City of Hope, department of cancer immunotherapeutics and tumor immunology, California, USA
Research Scholar, computational immunology, Stanford University, Department of Electrical Engineering, California, USA
Ph.D, computational biology (immunology), Faculty of Life Sciences, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
M.Sc, computational biology, Faculty of Life Sciences, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
B.Sc, computational biology Faculties of Life Sciences and Computer Sciences, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
Affiliations:
National virology laboratory, Israel Ministry of Health, Public Health Directorate
Research Grants & Awards:
2022, Direct detection and nanopore sequencing of poliovirus from environmental, samples in Israel, Bill & Melinda gates foundation
2020, Pathogenesis and single cell molecular dynamics in mice of West Nile virus, genotypes endemic to Israel, Israel Estate Fund
2020, Sequencing and database for SARS-CoV-2 characterization in Israel, Israel Ministry of Health
2019, Application of metagenomic approaches to examine the viromes of recycled waters for safe and sustainable reuse in irrigation. BARD US-Israel Agricultural Research and Development Fund
2019, Defining the virome in Liposarcoma and Leiomyosarcoma, Wendy Walk Sarcoma grant, Alan B. Slifka Foundation
2019, Molecular epidemiological characterization of the 2018-9 measles outbreak in Israel, via next generation sequencing of measles virus whole genomes, Chief Scientist of the Ministry of Health
Publications:
Here is a link to the publications of Dr. Neta Zuckerman
