The Team

Prof. Amir Roey J.

Principal investigator

Roey was born and raised in Tel-Aviv and after backpacking through North and South America he started his chemistry studies in Tel-Aviv University. He received his Ph.D. from TAU under the supervision of Prof. D. Shabat, and had a major part in the development of the concept of Self-Immolative Dendrimers. Later, Roey joined the lab of Prof. C. J. Hawker as a Rothschild post-doctoral researcher at the Materials Research Laboratory in UCSB, where he used enzymatic degradation as a trigger for the self-assembly of block copolymers. In 2012, Roey joined the faculty of the School of Chemistry at TAU as a senior lecturer. Roey’s research group focuses on the utilization of high molecular precision for the design of enzyme-responsive polymeric amphiphiles and their utilization as nanocarriers for controlled drug delivery applications. Roey was selected in 2017 as a PMSE Young Investigator and in 2018 he received tenure and promoted to associate professor. Later that year he was awarded with the Israel Chemical Society Prize for Outstanding Young Scientist. Since March 2017, Roey serves as the academic head of the medicinal chemistry unit at the Blavatnik Center for Drug Discovery and starting from 2020, he is heading the new ADAMA Center for Novel Delivery Systems In Crop Protection in TAU.

amirroey@tauex.tau.ac.il

Dr. Salome Azoulay Ginsburg

Lab manager

Salome started and completed her undergraduate studies at Bar-Ilan University. In 2012, after receiving her B.Sc in medicinal chemistry with honors, Salome decided to continue an advanced degree. In 2014, Salome obtained her M.Sc. with honors under the supervision of Prof. Sharon Ruthstein. Her project focused on determination of the sensing and transcription mechanism of Bacterial Cu(I) E.coli metal sensor, CueR, using EPR spectroscopy. After her M.Sc, Salome worked as an analytical R&D chemist at Dexcel Pharma. During her work at Dexcel, Salome developed method for innovative prescription, generics and OTC pharmaceutical products in the R&D department according to FDA and Europian Phamacopoeia requirements. In December 2015, Salome returned to the academic and started her PhD degree, under the supervision of Prof. Arie Gruzman at BIU. During her PhD, Salome developed and synthesized new drug for the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders by inhibiting protein aggregation. In November 2019, Salome joined the lab of Prof. Roey J. Amir in the faculty of the School of Chemistry at TAU as a lab manager. In April 2021, Salome received her Ph.D certificate.

salome@tauex.tau.ac.il

Students

Nicole Edelstein-Pardo, Ph.D student

Nicole completed her B.Sc. in the chemistry research excellence program in TAU in 2017. In the 3rd year of her undergraduate studies, Nicole did a research project in the group, working on the synthesis, study and characterization of a tri-block copolymers with fluorescence tags. Nicole is a PhD student in collaboration with Dr. Amit Sitt's group. Her research focuses on the fabrication of active microfibers and nanopatricles from enzyme responsive block copolymers for biomedical applications.

nicolee@mail.tau.ac.il

Shahar Tevet, Ph.D student

Shahar joined the group in October 2018 as part of the prestigious ‘Adi Lautman Interdisciplinary Program for Outstanding Students’ - a direct M.Sc. program at TAU. Her M.Sc project focused on studying the effect of amphiphiles and substrates hydrophobicity on the reactivity of micellar nanoreactors. Shahar received her master’s degree with honors in November 2020 and immediately started her PhD studies. She is currently working on the design and synthesis of enzyme-responsive tri-block copolymers and catalytic micellar nanoreactors.

shahartevet@mail.tau.ac.il

18156267_1340304432683029_22250814846013

Krishna Vippala,

Ph.D student

Krishna received his master degree in Biotechnology and Bioinformatics from La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia, where he studied how mutations in Profilin-1 cause aggregation in cytoskeleton using GFP tag and fluorescent microscopy. He then moved to the pharma industry in India where he worked on developing processes for purifying and characterizing biosimilars. Krishna joined the Amir’s group in 2019 as a joint PhD student with Teva pharmaceuticals Ltd, as part of the TheraCat ITN project. His research focuses on developing dendritic amphiphiles, which are used to build nano scaffolds for transition metal catalysts for biomedical applications.

kvippala@gmail.com

Michal Brodsky,
Ph.D student

Michal finished her B.Sc. in chemistry at TAU in 2021, after completing a research project in the group, working on synthesizing amphiphilic enzyme responsive tri-block copolymer.

She then joined the group as an MSc student, and her research focused on the development of programmable polymeric formulations that can respond to different types of stimuli.

In December 2023, Michal defended her MSc thesis and continued in the group as a PhD student.

michalbbb@gmail.com

Keerthana Mulamukkil,
Ph.D student

Keerthana received her BS-MS dual degree with a major in chemistry from Indian institute of science education and research (IISER), Pune in May 2022. Her MS-thesis focused on ‘Design and synthesis of Polycaprolactone based clickable nano-assemblies for antimicrobial activity’ under the supervision of Prof. M Jayakannan.

In November 2022, Keerthana moved to Israel and joined the research group of Prof. Roey Amir as a Ph.D. student in. Currently she is working on the design, synthesis, and characterization of enzymatically degradable PEG-PCL block co-polymers with different architectures for developing new nano-carrier tools for drug delivery

keerthana@mail.tau.ac.il

Hala Dawud,
M.Sc student

Hala received her B.Sc. degree in Pharmaceutical Engineering from Azrieli College of Engineering, Jerusalem, in November 2022. In 2023 she joined the group as an M.Sc. student in collaboration with Dr. Aiman Abu Ammar from Azrieli College of Engineering. Her research focuses on developing formulations based on enzyme-responsive polymeric amphiphiles for the fabrication of biodegradable microneedles for controlled release drug delivery.

haladawud@mail.tau.ac.il