Karen Avraham

Karen B. Avraham (born in 1962) is an American-Israeli human geneticist. She is a full professor at Tel Aviv University, and the current Vice Dean of the Sackler Faculty of Medicine. Her laboratory is in the Department of Human Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry. She is currently President of the Israel Society for Auditory Research (ISAR), President of the Federation of Israel Societies for Experimental Biology (FISEB/ILANIT, 2017) and a former board member of the I-CORE: Gene Regulation in Complex Human Disease. Avraham is a council member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO, 2017), Chair of the Scientific Committee of Agir Pour L’Audition (Acting for Hearing, 2017) in France, Council member of the Human Genome Organization (HUGO, 2017), an elected member of the International Collegium Oto-Rhino-Laryngologicum Amicitiae Sacrum (CORLAS), and past President of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology (ARO) and the Genetic Society of Israel (GSI). She is an editor of Mammalian Genome (2017), section editor of the European Journal of Human Genetics (2017), and on the advisory editorial board of EMBO Molecular Medicine.

Born in Canada, Avraham moved to the US at a young age. She received her B.A. degree in Biology from Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S., her Ph.D. from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, under the supervision of Yoram Groner, and her post-doctoral training at the National Cancer Institute, Frederick, Maryland, U.S., under the supervision of Nancy Jenkins and Neal Copeland.

Avraham’s research has centered on the discovery of disease genes, focusing on hereditary hearing loss. Her team takes a comprehensive approach to study the molecular basis of hearing loss, using genetic, developmental, biochemical, cellular and bioinformatic tools. She leads the effort in exome sequencing for the discovery of disease genes to identify mutations that are relevant for the hearing-impaired population. Her group has demonstrated that microRNAs are essential for development and function of inner ear hair cells in vertebrates.

Avraham has been awarded the Bruno Memorial Prize from the Rothschild Foundation. Funding in her laboratory includes from the National Institutes of Health, European Commission, Human Frontiers, I-CORE, Israel Science Foundation and the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation.

Avraham has supervised many students through their M.Sc. or Ph.D. training, students, physicians and post docs have trained in her lab. She has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals, and written reviews and book chapters.