Prof. Karen Avraham

Professor Karen Avraham is the Dean of the Gray Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences at Tel Aviv University and holds the Drs. Sarah and Felix Dumont Chair for Research of Hearing Disorders.

She was awarded her BA from Washington University in St. Louis and her PhD from the Weizmann Institute of Science, with her postdoctoral training at the US National Cancer Institute.

She heads the Laboratory of Neural and Sensory Genomics and is a member of the Gray School of Medical Sciences and the Sagol School of Neuroscience, as well as the Safra Center for Bioinformatics at Tel Aviv University. Professor Avraham was awarded, most recently, the FISEB STAR Award for Scientific Excellence and Leadership and the international CORLAS Shambaugh Prize for Excellence in Otology Research.

She is a founding member of the International Society for Inner Ear Therapeutics and is an advisor for the Lancet Commission on Global Hearing Loss. Professor Avraham has had an NIH R01 grant continuously since 2011, as well as numerous other international and national competitive grants.

She has mentored 150 students, post docs and MDs and published 200 manuscripts and reviews in international scientific journals.

Her research encompasses gene discovery and therapy for deafness, epilepsy, developmental delay and breathing disorders. Professor Avraham is one of the world's leading experts on the genetics of hearing loss and has successfully developed gene therapy on models for human deafness.

On the auditory health front, her team has been working towards establishing a newborn screening program with next-generation sequencing diagnostics with the Israel Ministry of Health. This latest project is an international first, which combines a massive public health effort with genetic screening on a national scale.