Dr. Yaniv Elkouby is a professor in the Department of Developmental Biology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem School of Medicine. Yaniv received his PhD from the Technion in 2010, under the supervision of Dale Frank, where he studied early embryonic development. With his desire to understand the earliest regulation of development, Yaniv set out to identify the source of this information in the oocyte. In 2011, Yaniv joined the lab of Mary Mullins at the University of Pennsylvania for his postdoctoral studies, where he established the zebrafish ovary as a new model system to study the cellular mechanisms of ovary development and early egg production. He anticipated that the developing ovary will provide a fruitful source for fascinating biology, which has been sprouting the different research direction in his lab. Yaniv is captivated by developmental processes and enthusiastically enjoys the satisfaction of leading original multi-disciplinary investigations and making important discoveries in biomedical research. 

Yaniv has been awarded multiple grants and awards, including ERC CoG, EMBO YIP, the ZCAI Prize for Discovery in Medical Research, and Prizes for Outstanding Investigator by the Hebrew University President and Rector, as well as the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine. Yaniv serves as an elected board member of the Israeli Society of Developmental Biology, and is a co-founder of Forsea Foods (A start-up company that transforms knowledge from developmental biology to the production of cultivated fish meat, aiming to nourish humanity while securing our oceans’ health and wealth).

Yaniv and his spouse are proud parents of four happy children. In his spare time Yaniv enjoys reading, playing the drums, scuba diving, photography and the gym.