Prof. Gad Galili

Prof. Gad Galili is a world-renowned researcher in the field of plant genetics and a professor of genetics in the Plant Sciences Department at the Weizmann Institute of Science. A leading researcher in the field of plant metabolic pathways, he was previously a postdoctoral fellow in biology at Stanford University and in cell biology at INRA (Versailles, France). He has co-authored more than 110 publications, is a co-editor of a book entitled Seed Development and Germination and is an editorial board member of The Journal of Experimental Botany. He is the Chief Scientific Advisor on the Scientific Advisory board of Protalix, an Israeli biotechnology company that produces proteins in plant cell cultures.

Prof. Galili holds B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from the Faculty of Agriculture of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a Ph.D. in Plant Genetics from the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Prof. Avraham Levy, Chairman of the Scientific advisory board

Prof. Avraham Levy is the Head of the Plant Science Department of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. Prof. Levy heads a laboratory studying mechanisms that contribute to the accelerated evolution of plant genomes, such as transposons, DNA damages, DNA recombination and genome duplications. He works on wheat, Arabidopsis tomato and budding yeast. Prof. Levy is the president of the Genetic Society of Israel, he served as the chairman of the Israeli Graminae consortium and on several national and international granting agencies panels. He is an ERC fellow and has lead scientific projects as coordinator for an EU consortium and for an Israeli Center of Research Excellence.

Prof. Levy holds a B.Sc. and an M.Sc. degree from the Faculty of Agriculture of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Ph.D. from the Department of Plant Genetics of the Weizmann Institute of Science. His post-doctoral research was done at Stanford University.

Prof. James Birchler

Prof. James Birchler is Curators' Professor of Biological Science at the University of Missouri, Columbia.  He joined the University of Missouri in 1991 after serving as an associate professor at the Harvard University since 1985. Prof. Birchler lab's research interests include gene expression in polyploids of maize, the molecular basis of aneuploid syndromes and of heterosis, the structure and behavior of chromosomes and centromeres in maize, the construction of engineered minichromosomes and in general the consequences of dosage-sensitive gene regulatory mechanisms in multicellular eukaryotes.

Prof. Birchler received his PhD in genetics and biochemistry in 1977 from Indiana University, where he studied dosage effects on gene expression in maize. His postdoctoral work was done at Oak Ridge National Lab, Roswell Park Memorial Institute, and the University of California, Berkeley. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and a member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA).