Ph.D. Graduate of Hebrew University One of Four in World to Win Top Prize for Young Life Scientists

Ph.D. Graduate of Hebrew University One of Four in World to Win Top Prize for Young Life Scientists

Jerusalem – A Ph.D. graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is one of four young scientists in the world to be awarded the GE & Science Prize for Young Life Scientists. He is Dr. Tommy Kaplan, who won the prize for his essay, "From DNA Sequence to Chromatin Dynamics: Computational Analysis of Transcriptional Regulation."

The GE & Science Prize for Young Life Scientists was created to recognize and reward outstanding Ph.D. graduate students from around the world in their work within the field of molecular biology. The initiative of GE Healthcare and Science/the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the prize seeks to foster visionary thought and research by supporting scientists at the onset of their careers.

Dr. Kaplan won the prize in the regional category of “all other countries.”  The other winners were from the US, Germany and Japan.

Dr. Kaplan received his B.Sc. in computer science and cognitive Studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His Ph.D. research, in computational biology, focused on various aspects of transcriptional regulation, under the supervision of Professors Nir Friedman and Hanah Margalit at the Hebrew University, and in close collaboration with Prof. Oliver Rando at Harvard University and the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Since 2002, Dr. Kaplan has been involved in teaching in the combined B.Sc./M.Sc. program in computer science and life sciences at the Hebrew University. Currently, he is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, where he develops computational models to understand the evolution and control of gene expression during the early developmental stages of fruit fly embryos.

Dr. Kaplan is married and the father of two sons. His aspiration is to return to Israel to open a lab in computational biology, preferably in Jerusalem, where he grew up. 

For further information: Jerry Barach, Dept. of Media Relations, the Hebrew University, Tel: 02-588-2904.  Orit Sulitzeanu, Hebrew University spokesperson, Tel: 054-8820016.