TAU professor appointed to Young Academy of Science

Tel Aviv Univesity's Prof. Dan Peer, of the The Department of Cell Research and Immunology of the George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences has been selected to take part in Israel's Young Academy of Science. The organization was established by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and consists of young scholars in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. 

The Young Academy of Science promotes excellence in scientific research, a closer relationship between academia and industry and cooperation between Israeli scientists and researchers from abroad. Its members are selected from among Israel's most promising young academics. 

About Prof. Dan Peer

Prof. Dan Peer did all his training at Tel Aviv University and was a research associate at the Immune Disease Institute at Harvard Medical School. He was recruited to Tel Aviv University in 2008 to establish the Laboratory of NanoMedicine.

His work was among the first to demonstrate systemic delivery of RNA molecules using targeted nanocarriers to the immune system and he pioneered the use of RNA interference (RNAi) for in vivo validation of new therapeutic targets within the immune system. Some of his pioneering work published in Science, Nature Nanotechnology and PNAS were highly cited.

He currently leads an NIH-funded lab in the Dept. of Cell Research and Immunology, and is also affiliated with the Department of Materials Sciences and Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering, both at Tel Aviv University. He is the Director of the Focal Technology Area (FTA) on Nanomedicines for Personalized Theranostics, a multimillion-dollar, 5-years project supported by the Israel National Nanotechnology Initiative and by the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Nanotechnology Research Fund. He has visiting academic appointments at Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA and at the Methodist Hospital Research Institute, Houston, TX.

Prof. Peer generated an international recognition in the field of leukocytes implicated diseases such as inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) and blood cancers. He received numerous awards; among them he was recognized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Excellence in Science Program for Young Investigators and was recently awarded the Innovator (2010) and the Breakthrough (2011, 2013) Awards from the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, Oakland, CA, USA on his pioneering work in inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD).