Dr. Tal Gilboa

In order for medicine to move towards individualized treatment based on a patient’s own characteristics, it is vital to be able to sense biological markers for different diseases early on with high accuracy and sensitivity. At Harvard Medical School and the Wyss Institute, Dr. Gilboa will be developing new biosensing technologies for biomarkers of neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s to allow early detection, before significant neurodegeneration has occurred. She will be working on single-molecule biosensors, which have the potential to discover and detect biomarkers quickly, with low sample requirements, and at a low cost. She expects to increase the detection sensitivity, throughput and multiplexing capabilities of single molecule arrays by developing, miniaturizing and integrating microfluidic lab-on-chip approaches and electro-optical sensing for high-throughput detection assays. Eventually she hopes to develop breakthroughs in the field of personalized diagnostics.

Dr. Gilboa is interested in the design of computerized medical equipment, and has taught courses on the subject to both undergraduate and graduate students. She was the leader of the Biomedical Engineering team for supporting women in science and engineering at the Technion.