Itay Mayrose (Principal Investigator)

I joined the Department of Molecular Biology and Ecology of Plants and The Edmond J. Safra Center for Bioinformatics in 2011. Before that, I was a post-doctoral fellow in the Beaty Biodiversity Centre at Vancouver (with Sally Otto and Loren Rieseberg), and performed my graduate studies at Tel-Aviv University – the M.Sc with Dan Graur and the Ph.D. with Tal Pupko.
I am interested in various aspects of plant evolution and with the development of novel computational tools for genome analyses. Visit the research page to learn more about what we’re currently doing.



Dana Azouri (Ph.D. student)

Dana joined the lab in October 2016.
She received her B.Sc in Biotechnology in 2015 from Tel-Aviv University and started the Fast & Direct Ph.D track in March 2016.
Dana is devising a system that optimizes phylogenies reconstruction, aiming to augment its accuracy without making the assumptions of model choice based methods.
Dana's work is supported by a fellowship from the Fast & Direct Ph.D Program for Outstanding Students.



Keren Halabi (Ph.D. student)

Keren joined the lab in March 2017. She received her B.Sc in Bioinformatics in 2017 and her M.Sc in Bioinformatics in 2019 from Tel-Aviv university. Keren is currently pursuing her Ph.D studies in Bioinformatics.
Keren is interested in the dynamics between phenotypes and genomic patterns, and is working on developing computational tools for detection of such dynamics and investigatng the utlities of such dynamics in inference of trends in viral evolution.
Keren's work is supported by a fellowship from the Edmond J. Safra Center for Bioinformatics at Tel-Aviv university.



Anat Shafir (Ph.D. student)

Anat joined the lab in October 2017. She received her B.Sc in Bioinformatics in 2017 from Tel- Aviv university, and now she is pursuing her M.Sc studies.
Anat's M.Sc project focuses on investigating the effect of asymmetric rates of sequence evolution on the detection of trait- dependent diversification rates.



Lior Glick (Ph.D. Student)

Lior completed his M.Sc studies at the Mayrose lab in 2015 and rejoined the lab in 2019.
His current research is focused on plant genome evolution using genomics and pan-genomics.









Tyler Poppenwimer (Post-Doctoral Fellow)

Tyler joined the lab in March 2021.
He received his Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Master in Statics from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in December of 2020. His doctoral dissertation focused on producing more realistic and accurate models of tree root growth with a specific emphasis on belowground interactions. For his master thesis, he worked on assessing the efficacy of alternative model selection criteria.
He is currently working to revise current biogeography estimates of major plant growth forms by assembling the world's largest georeferenced plant trait database. His work is supported by the Edmund J. Safra Bioinformatics Fellowship








Omer Caldararu (M.Sc student)

Omer joined the lab in 2021. He received his B.Sc in biotechnology in 2021 from Tel-Aviv university. Omer is currently pursuing his M.Sc studies in Mathematical and Theoretical Biology, under the joint supervision of Itay Mayrose and Eilon Shani.
His current research focuses on designing an sgRNA library to overcome functional redundancy in plants.









Udi Landau (Research Associate)

Udi joined the lab in December 2020.
He recieved his M.Sc. in plant science from the Hebrew University.
Udi is currently working on projects related to CRISPR-Cas9 accuracy and library construction.









Josef Bruk (Research Assistant)

Josef joined the lab in April 2022.
He received his B.Sc. in Biology and Medical sciences in 2021 from Tel-Aviv University.
Josef is currently working at the lab as a research assistant, and will start his M.Sc studies in Mathematical and Theoretical Biology.
His current project is related to CRISPR-Cas9 accuracy.










Former lab members:





Anna Rice (Post doctoral Student)

Anna joined the lab in August 2012. She has completed her PhD in the lab, focusing on the global distribution of polyploid plants. In her Post-doctoral studies Anna takes part in the CRISPR-IL consortium.


Eli Levy Karin (former Ph.D. student)

Eli joined the lab in November 2015. She was a PhD student in co-supervision with Prof. Tal Pupko. Eli's research interests were phenotype-genotype dynamics and various aspects of the impact of multiple sequence alignments on downstream analyses. Eli's work was supported by a fellowship from the Edmond J. Safra Center for Bioinformatics at Tel-Aviv university.
Visit Eli's homepage.



Ayelet Salman Minkov (former Post-Doctoral Fellow)

Ayelet holds a PhD in plant molecular biology from Ben-Gurion University. In her research she investigated the association between polyploidy and domestication of crop species.



Gal Hyams (former M.Sc student)

Gal joined the lab in September 2014 as a lab programmer then pursued his M.Sc studies in bioinformatics. His research interests involved developing novel bioinformatics tools. Gal's work was supported by a fellowship from the Edmond J. Safra Center for Bioinformatics at Tel-Aviv university.



Niv Sabath (former Post-Doctoral Fellow)

Niv earned his Ph.D. in Biology at the University of Houston with Professor Dan Graur. His research interests involved evolutionary biology, genetics, and comparative genomics. Niv's work was supported by a fellowship from the Edmond J. Safra Center for Bioinformatics at Tel-Aviv university. Niv's linkedin and citations.



Naama Kopelman (former Post-Doctoral Fellow)

Naama completed her Ph.D. in Human population genetics at the University of Tel Aviv and Stanford University (joint supervision). Her research interests involved evolutionary biology and genetics, phylogenetics, and comparative genomics. Naama's work was supported by a fellowship from the Edmond J. Safra Center for Bioinformatics at Tel-Aviv university.



Moshe Einhorn (former M.Sc Student)

Moshe joined the lab in February 2012. His research interests were combining phylogenetic methodologies for studying the evolutionary consequences of polyploidy in plants.



Shiran Abadi (former Ph.D. student)

Shiran joined the lab in July 2013. She began her M.Sc studies in Bioinformatics and continued in the direct Ph.D. track. Her research was employing computational applications to modelling evolutionary processes based on molecular data, as alternatives for the conservative, time-consuming, statistical approaches. Shiran's work was supported by fellowships from the Ariane de Rothschild foundation and the Edmond J. Safra Center for Bioinformatics at Tel-Aviv university. Shiran is currently a data scientist at NCR corporation.



Nomi Hadar (former M.Sc student)

Nomi received her B.Sc in bioinformatics from Bar Ilan university. She joined the lab in december 2015 and pursued her M.Sc studies in bioinformatics. Nomi is currenly working in Centarix Biotech.



Michal Drory (former Lab Programmer)

Michal, who holds a B.Sc in Electrical Engineering, joined the lab in May 2015. She developed several computational pipelines and maintained our lab servers.