Roy Bar-Ziv

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Roy Bar-Ziv is an associate professor in the Department of Materials and Interfaces at the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Israel. His research is inspired by emergent behavior and molecular computation in biological systems, such as the early stages of embryo development, and by semiconductor information technology. He combines physics, biology, and materials science to construct and explore cell-mimicking, artificial biological compartments on a chip.

At Radcliffe, Bar-Ziv is expanding his research to explore the paradigm of programmable on-chip DNA compartments as artificial cells, in which the essential reactions of living cells encoded in DNA take place inside miniaturized compartments fabricated in silicon. Understanding the emergent properties of these compartments may lead to assembly of artificial cells capable of computation, autonomous sensing, and replication, with applications in future technologies.

Bar-Ziv did his undergraduate studies in physics and mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and earned his PhD in physics from the Weizmann Institute of Science. He did his postdoctoral training at the Rockefeller University, where he received Burroughs Wellcome, Fulbright, and Rothschild fellowships. He returned to the Weizmann Institute as a faculty member and received a Yigal Alon Career Development Award. Bar-Ziv was awarded the Krill Prize for Excellence in Scientific Research, given to untenured scientists by the Wolf Foundation.