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  • Dr. Osnat Ohne, CEO

  • E-mail: osnatohn@bgu.ac.il
    Tel: +972 (08) 646 1963
    Fax: +972 (08) 647 2983​
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  • Dr. Ohne was appointed CEO starting Dec 1st 2017 following years of experience in the innovative drug development bio-industry in various managerial positions. Dr. Ohne was formerly a COO at Tiltan Pharma LTD. Prior to that role, she served as a Director Project leader in the Global Innovative R&D at Teva Pharmaceutical Industries for 10 years. During these years at Teva, Dr. Ohne led diverse innovative drug development projects, ranging from discovery, pre-clinical and clinical development of different drug product types and disease indications. As part of her role at Teva, she was involved in due diligence and management of diverse academic projects as well as of bio start-up companies, both in Israel and abroad, as part of Teva’s new projects unit and Teva's Innovative Venture unit.  Over the years, Dr. Ohne served, in parallel, as an independent consultant to Israeli venture capitals, University Tech Transfer units, startup companies and bio accelerators, mainly for early stage innovative drug development projects. Dr. Ohne received her PhD in Immunology from Tel Aviv University Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Department of Microbiology in 2001.

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  • Dr. Ron Lahav, Executive Director Research and Development​

    E-mail: btecnibn@bgu.ac.il
    Tel: 972 (08) 642 8630​
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  • Dr. Ron Lahav was recruited for the position of Executive Director R&D as of September 2017. Dr. Lahav did his PhD in Biology at Ben-Gurion University, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University in the Department of Molecular Biology. Dr. Lahav has been in the Pharmaceutical Industry for almost 15 years in several leadership and executive management positions. Initially starting as a Senior Scientist at the Canadian company AnorMed until its acquisition by Genzyme, Dr. Lahav returned to Israel and started work at Quark Pharmaceuticals as Project Director and was quickly promoted to overseeing all projects in various fields such as CNS and oncology. Dr. Lahav was the CEO of an incubator stage company called Quiet Therapeutics where he led the company from seed funding through to a series C round. Currently – as an initial phase, Dr. Lahav is employed half-time by the NIBN and continues his part-time employment as CEO of SpliSense, a spin-off company of the Hebrew University. Based on our wonderful experience with Dr. Lahav in the past few months, it has been agreed that he joins the NIBN full time as of April 2018.​


  • Prof. Ohad Birk, Scientific Director​

    E-mail: obirk@bgu.ac.il​

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  • Professor Ohad Birk, MD, PhD, is the former Director of the NIBN (2016-2017). Prof. Birk is the Head of the Genetics Institute at Soroka Medical Center (since 2001) and the Head of the Morris Kahn Laboratory of Human Genetics. He has been a member of the NIBN and the Head of its genetics section since its inception.

    Professor Birk is a leading human molecular geneticist, converging basic scientific research with effective clinical translational applications. Publishing in top scientific journals such as Nature, Nature Genetics, PNAS and American Journal of Human Genetics, his work is far-reaching and its impact has been echoed by The New York Times, BBC World and Al Jazeera.

    Professor Birk holds an MD from Tel Aviv University with a residency in Pediatrics at Sheba Medical Center, a PhD from the Weizmann Institute of Science, and he performed his post-doctoral work in clinical human genetics at the National Institute of Health, USA.

  • Maya Pitshadze, CFO

    Maya Pitshadze holds an Executive MBA (with Distinction) from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and a BA in Economics and Computer Science from Bar Ilan University (with Distinction). 
    Maya has over 16 years of experience in senior positions in the field of financing, including a position at an international pharmaceutical company. She has been at the NIBN since its founding and established the company’s financial and administrative systems.

    Email: pmaya@bgu.ac.il


  • Dr. Noam Diamant, Director of intellectual property
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    Dr. Diamant has been in charge of NIBN’s patents portfolio since 2014. Dr. Diamant is a biomed professional combining strong academic background with industry R&D experience and deep understanding of intellectual property. Dr. Diamant received his Ph.D. in the field of DNA damage repair from the Weizmann Institute of Science in 2008. After concluding his work at the Weizmann institute Dr. Diamant continued to serve as a project manager at Eventus Dx, a cancer diagnostics company, where he gained experience in immunology and protein array technology. In 2013 Dr. Diamant co-founded Ingenium IP, a specialized consultancy firm in the field of intellectual property strategy for the biomed sector. Dr. Diamant actively manages the IP portfolios of a number small and medium Biomed companies.  In 2015 Dr. Diamant co-founded Emendo Biotherapeutics, a genome editing pharmaceutical company funded by Orbimed USA and Takeda Ventures Inc.




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  • Dr. Alon Zilka, Head Technician

    E-mail: azilha@bgu.ac.il

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    The head technician is mainly responsible for shared scientific equipment purchase and maintenance in the NIBN. It also includes updating and tracking the inventory of all equipment bought with NIBN budgets. Apart from his position as a head technician, Dr. Alon Zilka is also managing an infra-Structure supporting Proteomic unit equipped with high-end sophisticated instrumentation including a high speed sorter, a laser scanning confocal microscope, a high throughput fluorescent scanning microscope, a robotic system connected to a high speed plate reader and instruments for measuring affinity and kinetic constants.

    Dr. Zilka received his Bachelors and Masters degrees from the Hebrew university (HUJI) and his doctorate degree from the Ben-Gurion University (BGU). After a short Post–doc in BGU and after working as a head scientist in a startup company (Natspears LTD.) he joined the Institute at his current position. ​​