Ben-Gurion University of the Negev's Dr. Benyamin Rosental (pictured below) has won a Falling Walls Science Breakthrough of the Year 2022 Award in the field of Life Sciences.
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The Falling Walls Foundation is inspired by the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 and the dawn of a new era of freedom. The non-profit foundation promotes breakthrough thinking and builds a growing network of leaders from science, business, and the public sector to tackle great challenges and make groundbreaking ideas accessible to society.
The juries chaired by Helga Nowotny, President Emerita of the European Research Council, selected the winning projects out of 1,000 nominations submitted from 105 countries.
Dr. Rosental received his award at the Falling Walls Science Summit in Berlin on November 9, 2022.
Dr. Benyamin Rosental is an Assistant Professor in The Shraga Segal Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Genetics at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He received his PhD in Immunology in 2013. His laboratory research focuses on tissue acceptance by the immune system, and stem cell transplantation. Among their projects, he is modulating the immune system in blood-forming stem cell transplantation (bone marrow transplantation) to make it a safer process. Additionally, he and his team are looking for the immune system’s “tipping point” between tissue regeneration and inflammatory destruction. While most of the work in the laboratory is focusing on improving transplantation and modulating the immune system in medical settings, they also translate their research to other fields of stem cells and immunity for ecological questions.
"We are developing the tools for stem cell-based therapy for corals. The idea is to translate medical tools for an ecological need. To be able to transfer heat resilience from one individual to another, so when the next heat wave hits the corals, they could survive it. This is similar to bone marrow transplantation in humans, when we transplant to an immune deficient child bone marrow containing stem cells from a healthy donor," Dr. Rosental explains.
“The Falling Walls Science Breakthroughs of the Year 2022 provide answers to urgent questions such as climate justice or the current global energy crisis. All nominated projects are of outstanding scientific excellence! I thank all participants and awardees for breaking the walls towards crucial scientific achievements with their outstanding work”, says Jürgen Mlynek, Chairman of the Falling Walls Foundation.
