| 12 | 2024 Annual Report As Prof. Shulamit Michaeli departs her position at Bar-Ilan University as Vice President for Research, she leaves a legacy that spans four decades of groundbreaking research and leadership. Appointed in 2017, she has played a pivotal role in shaping the university's scientific direction, with notable positions during her career as Dean of the Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences and founding Director of the Nano-Medicine Center at the Bar-Ilan Institute for Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials (BINA). Her career reflects a deep commitment to advancing knowledge in RNA biology, infectious diseases, and nanomedicine. Prof. Michaeli’s academic journey began with a PhD in microbiology from Tel Aviv University, when for her post-doctoral training she decided to move to a field that had just gained traction, namely “neglected diseases,” particularly those caused by eukaryotic parasites like trypanosomes, which are responsible for diseases such as African sleeping sickness. “I wanted to study more advanced organisms and understand gene expression in eukaryotes,” she explained. Drawn to trypanosomes' unique survival mechanisms, such as their ability to evade the immune system through antigenic variation, she embarked on research that would later define her career. During her time at the University of California, Berkeley, and UCSF, she became an expert in trans-splicing, an RNA processing mechanism unique to these parasites. Prof. Michaeli’s work is also deeply intertwined with nanotechnology. Over the years, her lab has collaborated with the chemistry department to develop nanoparticles for drug delivery. Building on this expertise, Prof. Michaeli established her lab, first at the Weizmann Institute and later at Bar-Ilan, where she made significant contributions to Transforming the Field of “Neglected Diseases” into a Legacy of Groundbreaking Research and Leadership Prof. Shulamit Micheli
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