Award-Winning Scholars

The Berman Lab studies mechanisms of drug tolerance, the ability of fungal pathogens to survive despite appropriate levels of drug treatment.

The work is performed in the model yeast pathogenic species Candida, which causes life-threatening infections in patients with reduced immunity, for example, after cancer chemotherapy. The study of multidrug resistance also has important implications for the study of how cancer cells develop tolerance to the drugs used to treat them.

• 2026 - Keynote Speaker, 2026 FASEB Summer Research Conference on Chromosome Biology and Cell States in Yeasts. (June/July)
• 2025 Co-Chair of EMBO/EMBL Conference on Mechanisms of drug resistance and tolerance in bacteria, fungi, and cancer (March) 
• 2024 - Keynote speaker, International Specialized Symposium on Yeasts38, Warsaw, Poland (September)
• 2024-2029 - MAVRI/ISF Grant - Awarded a MAVRI: The National Accelerator of Biomedical Research in Israel grant alongside a research team from Weizmann Institute of Science.  The grant focuses on exploiting harmless yeast species that compete with pathogenic yeasts to design new strategies for treating yeast and other fungal infections.
• 2024 - Keynote Speaker at German Microbiology Societies Meeting in Würzburg, Germany.
• 2023 - Foundation Lecturer at the British Society of Medical Mycology Meeting (September).
• 2023 - Chair of Gordon Research Conference on the Molecular Mechanisms of Evolution (June).
• 2023 - Honorary Professorship - Named an Honorary Professor at the Medical Research Council Centre for Medical Mycology, Exeter University, UK.
• 2023-2026 - JPIAMR Grant - Awarded a Joint Programming Initiative on Antimicrobial Resistance grant alongside research teams in Belgium, Spain, and TAU’s Chemistry Department. The grant focuses on antifungal drug resistance, exploring treatment regimens leveraging cross-resistance and collateral sensitivity.
• 2021-2027 ERC SYNERGY Grant - Coordinating Principle Investigator on a 10M Euro grant from the European Research Council Synergy program alongside research teams Germany and France. The grant focuses on antifungal drug drug tolerance at the level of species diversity, isolate molecular genetics and metabolomics and properties that differ between genetically identical single cells.
• 2020 - Appointed to the Nathan Galston Chair of Antimicrobial Drug Research at Tel Aviv University.
• Elected Memberships - Elected to several international societies, including:
  • EMBO (European Molecular Biology Organization)
  • American Association for the Advancement of Science
  • American Academy of Microbiology
  • Board of Directors of the Genetics Society of America