An Award Winning Mother, Scientist, and Student

Michal Marcus, a doctoral candidate at the Neuro Engineering Research lab led by Prof. Orit Shefi has won the Rappaport Prize for Excelling Students of Biomedical Engineering. This award is offered annually to four excelling doctoral candidates of biomedicine. “I was thrilled and very excited when I heard,” shares Michal. “In addition to the acknowledgement, this is an indication that my research is groundbreaking, relevant and important.”

Michal (30), a married mother of 3, says: “I’m about to complete my PhD and would like to take part in medical research. I love the challenge and the team work in research groups, and I hope to work on clinically applicable projects.”

Marcus holds a BSc in Biotechnology from BIU’s Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences, and an MSc from the Faculty of Engineering, working under Prof. Shefi in developing methods to rehabilitate the nerve system. She won the prestigious prize for her development of methods to lead medication directly to infected areas of the body (rather than flowing freely in the bloodstream). “If the factor in question – for instance, the NGF protein (the neural growth factor), which has rehabilitative qualities and is currently clinically tried on Alzheimer’s patients – is attached to magnetic nano particles, it will enable us to use an external magnetic field to control the factor’s location in the body, and to lead it to the damaged area.

Another research focus of Michal’s is magnetizing neural cells, rendering them independent magnetic units. As such, employing an external magnetic field will enable us to construct a controlled neural network, i.e. control the cell’s location, its extensions’ trajectory and the organization of the neural network. In the future, this will enable us to engineer tissues, bioelectronic particles, and more.”

Michal was informed of her win by Nobel Laureate Prof. Ciechanover, Aaron, who heads the Baruch and Ruth Rappopot Foundation's awards committee.