The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

Nathalie Balaban completed her PhD in Semiconductor Physics at the Weizmann Institute. During her post-doctoral research at Princeton and Rockefeller Universities, she became interested in cell-to-cell variability, focusing on the response of bacteria to antibiotics. Using novel microfluidic devices, the work revealed that inherent growth rate variability underlies bacterial persistence. In 2003, she joined the Physics Department at the Hebrew University, establishing the Biological Physics group.  Her work has explored the genetic networks that amplify noise to generate cell-to-cell variability, and has shown that variability of growth dynamics can evolve to match the time-scale of environmental changes, leading to the rapid evolution of bacterial tolerance to antibiotics. She has been awarded the Dicke fellowship from Princeton University, the Krill prize from the Wolf foundation and the Klachky Prize.