Dr. Danny Ben-Zvi
For his PhD in Life Sciences at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Dr. Ben-Zvi asked the question: How does an embryo coordinate its developmental patterning processes with its actual size? The question was an old one, but his experiments led to a new mathematical model for how patterning scales with size that is now part of developmental biology textbooks.
During his subsequent training at Harvard, where he was a Fulbright and Rothschild post-doctoral fellow, Dr. Ben-Zvi switched fields. He studied the new physiology that ensues after bariatric (“weight loss”) surgeries leading to rapid diabetes resolution and sustained weight loss. Today Dr. Ben-Zvi is an assistant professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem-Hadassah Medical School, and he continues to study how bariatric surgeries affect metabolism and physiology. His long-term goal is to discover how to achieve the positive effects of bariatric surgery without surgical intervention, potentially leading to a cure for type 2 diabetes and to reversing obesity. Dr. Ben-Zvi is a Major (Reserves) in the Israel Intelligence Corps, having done his undergraduate studies through Talpiot, the Israel Defense Forces’ elite academic program.