For his achievements in the research of cellular responses to DNA damage and the molecular basis of the human genetic disorder Ataxia-Telangiectasia. This research has revolutionized our understanding of the DNA damage response and has revealed new avenues to understanding the functional links between the DNA damage response and cancer formation.
Professor Yosef Shil oh was born in Haifain 1949. He received his training in human genetics and cancer research at The Technion in Haifaand at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He was a research fellow at HarvardMedicalSchooland at The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. This year (2005-2006) he is a Fogarty Scholar in the Human Genome Research Institute at the U.S. National Institute of Health.
His permanent position is in the Department of Human Genetics and Molecular Medicine at the Sackler School of Medicine, TelAvivUniversity, where he is incumbent of theDavid and Inez Myers Chair in Cancer Genetics and head of the Myers Laboratory for Genetic Research. He is a member of the Israel National Academy of Sciences and Humanities and a member of numerous international organisations, among them the European Molecular Biology Organisation and the Human Genome Organisation.
For almost 30 years Prof. Sh il oh has been investigating the response of mammalian cells to damage caused to the DNA by environmental agents such as radiation and carcinogenic chemicals. From the time he was a doctoral student he has focused his work on the devastating human genetic disorder Ataxia-Telangiectasia(A-T). This disease is caused by a defect in responding to radiation damage to the DNA. The defective gene in this disease was identified in his laboratory in1995, a discovery that paved the way for a series of investigations on the cellular response to radiation damage, carried out in his and many other laboratories around the world.
His work has earned him many awards and honors, including Teva’s Founders Prize and fellowships from the American Cancer Society.
