Arbel Artzy-Schnirman, Ph.D

Director, Applied Medical Technology Research Center

Dr. Artzy-Schnirman completed her Ph.D. in Bionanotechnology at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology in 2011. During her doctoral studies, she was the first to demonstrate a generic electrical-to-biological transducer comprising a two-state electronic antigen and a CAR-T cell engineered to bind the antigen exclusively in its “on” state.  Her work was inspired by biology where pathways are directed by molecular recognition.
 

Dr. Arbel Artzi-Schnirman

From 2011 to 2016, Dr. Artzy-Schnirman pursued postdoctoral research at Imperial College London in Prof. Molly Stevens' group in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering’s Department of Materials. Motivated by the need for antigen-specific immunotherapy approaches for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, she led the development of a novel artificial antigen-presenting “cell” for detection and desensitization of auto-reactive T cells associated with type 1 diabetes. Using this platform, the team was able to detect rare populations of auto-reactive cells that could not be detected otherwise. 
In 2016, Dr. Artzy-Schnirman returned to Israel and to the Technion, joining the Biofluids lab in the Biomedical Engineering Department as a senior researcher and leading the development of preclinical in vitro platforms. Specifically, she spearheaded the development of a 3D lung organ-on-chip as a tumor model system recapitulating the microenvironment from human lung and metastatic breast cancer.
Her work has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Arbel_Artzy-Schnirman).
 
She has received numerous academic and professional awards, including the EMBO Research Fellow (co-funded by the European FP7), Weizmann Institute of Science National Postdoctoral Award Program, Clore Scholars Programme, Scholarship for Excellence in Research from the Israel Council for Higher Education, and a Scholarship for Excellence in Converging Technologies, among others.
In 2021, Dr. Artzy-Schnirman joined Rambam Health Care Campus and established the Applied Medical Technology Research Center (MATRiC). She is passionate about translating research into clinical applications by harnessing biomimetics and bioengineering for practical use, closing the loop of bench to bedside and back to the bench to refine novel therapeutic approaches through learning from patients.