Dr. Yifat Merbl

Dr. Yifat Merbl completed her BS summa cum laude in Computational Biology at Bar Ilan University in 2003. She earned an MSc in Immunology at the Weizmann Institute in 2005 with Prof. Irun Cohen. She joined the first PhD program in Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School, completing her PhD there in 2010. She stayed on at Harvard as a postdoctoral fellow until joining the Department of Immunology at the Weizmann Institute in 2014.
Dr. Merbl’s research explores the many modifications that proteins undergo in the human body. Drawing on her background in computational biology, cell biology, biochemistry, and immunology, Dr. Merbl developed a high-throughput system that enabled her to monitor post-translational modifications of thousands of proteins in parallel, under conditions that are relatively close to those of the complex cellular environment. In addition, she developed a profiling system using protein microarrays that allow her to identify the changes that occur to thousands of individual proteins, simultaneously. In her new lab, Dr. Merbl wants to zero in how the ubiquitin system, one of the most important post-translation modifiers in the process of cell division, controls the macrophages that have been shown to play a role in various human disorders ranging from inflammatory diseases (e.g. rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease) to cancer.
Her scholarships and awards include being nominated for the NIH Independent Award. She received a pre‐doctoral fellowship in the Department of System Biology at Harvard Medical School, the Horowitz Center for Complexity Science Award in 2005, the Sarah Werch Research Scholarship in 2004, and the Sara Rottenberg Scholarship in Cancer Research at the Weizmann Institute in 2003. She received the 2000 President’s Excellence Award at Bar‐Ilan University. In 2014, she was also selected to join the Israeli Centers of Research Excellence (I-CORE) program in structural biology of the cell. She is the author of two patents, including one for the application of her protein profiling system to clinical diagnostics and biomarker discovery.