Affiliation: University of Jerusalem, Israel
Keywords: Aging, Genetics, Genome editing, Killifish, Age-related disease.
Full profile: Itamar is an Assistant Professor of Genetics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel (2018 – ). He earned his PhD from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel in 2012 and completed his postdoctoral training with Prof. Anne Brunet at Stanford University in California (2013-2017). His research primarily focuses on unraveling the molecular mechanisms underlying vertebrate aging and age-related diseases. The aging field, paradoxically, is relatively nascent and lacks core explanatory paradigms found in more established disciplines. Experimental vertebrate aging presents additional challenges, particularly as classical models are relatively long-lived. Therefore, the Harel lab is pioneering a genetic platform using the naturally short-lived turquoise killifish, which lives only twice as long as Drosophila. Through this model, Itamar aims to explore the scaling of aging across species and its dimorphism between sexes, why aging is such a strong driver of disease, and the correlation between longevity and species-specific traits (such as age at maturity). Itamar’s research has received funding from a range of national and international grants, including the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) and the European Research Council (Starting Grant awarded in 2023). In 2018, he was honored with a Faculty Scholar Award from the Zuckerman STEM leadership program. Itamar is married to Guy and is the proud father of Alon and Eyal.