Dr. Gili Bisker

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Gili Bisker has a B.A. in Mathematics and Physics from the Technion, Summa cum Laude, and she is a graduate of the Technion Excellence Program. During her bachelor’s degree, Gili received several awards including the excellence encouragement fund prize, the Yuval Levi prize, the Dr. Maxim Bikov prize, as well as the Knesset (Israeli parliament) award for outstanding undergraduate achievements. As an undergraduate, Gili participated in research in the Physics department under the supervision of Prof. Noam Soker in the field of astrophysics.

Gili completed her master’s degree in the Physics department in the Technion, cum Laude, under the supervision of Prof. Yosi Avron, in the field of quantum information. She received a scholarship from the Technion graduate school for excellence, and also the Gutwirth special prize for M.Sc. students. Gili was chosen to represent the Technion as a member in the dean delegation to the USA for fund raising.

Gili pursued her Ph.D. degree in the Norman Seiden multidisciplinary graduate program in nanoscience and nanotechnology. She worked under the supervision of Prof. Dvir Yelin in the Biomedical Optics laboratory in the department of Biomedical engineering in the Technion. She has received the Russell Berrie scholarship for outstanding graduate students, and the UNESCO-L’ORÉAL Fellowship for young women in life sciences. In her Ph.D. research, Gili focused, amongst others, on drug release from gold nanoparticles using ultra-short laser pulses for cancer therapy.

During her graduate studies in the Technion, Gili worked as a teaching assistant in the Physics department, for which she has received an excellence in teaching award. She taught undergraduate students topics in modern physics, and instructed students in an undergraduate physics lab.

Gili is a recipient of the Technion-MIT fellowship, and she is now a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Prof. Michael Strano, in the department of Chemical Engineering in MIT. Gili is working in the field of nanotechnology on bio-sensors based on single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT). SWNT consist of a single graphene layer rolled into a tube, whose diameter is in the nanometer range. Owing to their fluorescence in the near infrared part of the spectrum, where tissue is relatively transparent, SWNT are promising candidates for in-vivo detection applications. Moreover, appropriate wrapping agents render them biocompatible, and they exhibit no photobleaching. By tailoring the wrapping of the nanotubes and monitoring their fluorescence response upon the introduction of bio-analytes, Gili is developing molecular sensors for proteins and small molecules of interest. These sensors can be localized in a specific region in the body by immobilizing them within a hydrogel which would also allow for external optical detection.