A Super Woman PhD

In October 2017 Inbar Yariv (30) gave birth to Yair, with two-year-old Eitan already waiting at home. She had just submitted an article written as part of her doctoral dissertation. “Maternity leave while completing your doctorate isn’t really a leave. You can’t just get away from it all,” says Yariv. “Thankfully, I had the full support of the faculty staff and especially my supervisor, Prof. Dror Fixler, and they tried to bother me as little as possible about the article, rewriting it, etc. And still, towards the end of my maternity leave, I had to be in the lab. So I just brought Yair with me, and we worked around his schedule. I wrote an article with my baby… Both my kids are regular visitors here at the faculty. That’s what you would call a very early registration -…” laughs Yariv. 

Yariv completed her BSc in Electrical Engineering at the faculty, and opted to continue her academic career here. Working in Prof. Fixler’s lab, she developed an innovative optical system to detect nano-particles. “Every substance in the universe has optical properties – like the ability to scatter or absorb light,” she explains. “The method we developed typifies and categorizes the optical attributes of substances – which enables us to conduct high resolution analysis in different conditions. Our study focused on biomedical challenges, such as tracking nanoparticles in tissues. The tissue’s optical properties, just like any other substance, are affected by different parameters – such as illnesses, medication or cosmetics – and the signals detected in my system are affected accordingly. So using this system, I can see the changes in the tissue, which enables me to try and characterize abnormal tissues, and evaluate the treatment. Examine nanoparticles injected to the tissue and track their location and analyze whether they reached their desired destination.

Initially, says Yariv, the system was used to examine the applications on the skin surface. This research is relevant today in the dermatology and cosmetics worlds for ointments for eczema, atopic dermatitis, acne, botox injections, etc. “Our method enables us to substitute Botox or Hyaluronic acid injections with ointments and creams, providing a less invasive, painless, self applicable solution. Just recently, Hava Zigboim Cosmetics launched an antiaging cream our team helped develop,” says Yariv. “But this method is useful in many other fields. For instance, in a study we conducted jointly with SCR, a company monitoring cattle, we were able to identify optical signature of the various milk components, which enabled us to detect infected milk. This milk, if transferred into the gathering tank, contaminates the entire tank, and thousands of liters of milk will have to be disposed of. Consequently, this development also has significant financial implications, in this case – to the dairy market. Another use for this technology can be blood flow detection, which might revolutionize surgery techniques.

Yariv’s work has recently won her a BSF Prof. Rahamimoff Travel Grant given to young researchers to fund research trips of Israeli doctoral candidates to labs in the US, and vice versa. In April 2018 Yariv is planning to visit Prof. Steve Jacques’ lab at Tufts University in Boston.  “I plan to conduct evaluations of unique samples we are preparing here at Bar-Ilan, in order to compare our system’s performance with theirs, and study their systems for extracting the optical properties of various substances,” she explains. Yair, who will be six months old in April, will be joining her trip. She says he is used to being her lab partner. “My mother will be coming with us so she can watch him during the day, while I’m at work. I’ll have to find a way to pump breast milk, but I’m sure I’ll manage.”

Yariv has no plan to slow down her career for her family life – and she enjoys full support for this decision, both at work and at home. “The faculty continues to provide a familial, accepting environment. Dina Yeminy, the Administrative Head, is very obliging, as are all faculty members. Everyone is putting their best efforts into their student mothers and try to help us return to the faculty as smoothly as possible after giving birth. We are also provided with the best conditions to incorporate our family life into our work. Just recently they turned one of the student lounges into a nursing room, so that the young mothers at the faculty can breastfeed and change their babies comfortable. For me it was easier because I share my office with only women, so we can just lock the door from the inside when need be. But as an undergrad, I had a girlfriend with a young baby, and Dina gave her a key to an empty room so she can breastfeed and pump there. They will always come up with a solution to make it as convenient as possible for us.”