Anat Akiva PhD

Dr. Anat Akiva is an assistant professor at the Cell Biology Department. Her primary interest is in the field of biomineralization, aiming to understand the processes of hard tissue formation in health and disease. Her research aims at the fundamental understanding of mineralization processes which have essential implications in regenerative medicine. Her most recent activities also include the study of pathological mineralization in bone-related diseases such as osteogenesis imperfecta (brittle bone disease) and calcification of soft tissues such as atherosclerosis (blood vessel calcification).

Anat received her B.Sc., and M.Sc. degree (cum laude) in Chemistry from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. Her major was in physical chemistry and solid-state NMR. She performed her Ph.D. studies at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, in the group of Prof Lia Addadi and Prof Steve Weiner, where she investigated the process of bone mineralization in vivo using the zebrafish and chicken embryo as animal models. She mastered advanced imaging and spectroscopy techniques such as in vivo fluorescent confocal imaging, cryo-(FIB)-SEM, Raman, and µ-spot X-ray spectroscopy. In 2016 she moved to the Netherlands for her postdoctoral studies at the group of Prof. Nico Sommerdijk in the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), where she has established a new research line on Biological Materials Chemistry.