MSc Student

Hiring: 2 MSc Students — Gene Therapy & Genome Engineering

Elias Lab, The Department of Biotechnology Engineering, Braude College of Engineering, Karmiel

Scholarship + tuition covered · Starting October 2026 · Apply by 15 September

The problem we work on

Nearly every genome-editing tool in use today — CRISPR, ZFNs, TALENs — works by cutting DNA and letting the cell repair the break. That's excellent for switching a gene off or changing a few letters. It is poor at the opposite problem: putting something in.

Large insertions are inefficient, and every double-strand break carries risks: indels, chromosomal rearrangements, and unintended activation of nearby genes. For diseases that require a whole functional gene to be delivered, this is a real ceiling.

What we do about it

We engineer tyrosine site-specific recombinases, enzymes that recognise a specific DNA sequence and directly integrate new DNA into it, with no double-strand break. Our lead system is the HK022 integrase, and we work from a map of native attB-like sites across the human genome - landing pads the genome already contains.

Why it matters

→ Payload size stops being the limit. Multi-kilobase inserts become practical, opening up diseases where the gene is simply too large for current approaches.

→ One therapy, many mutations. Insert a working copy of a gene, and it works for patients regardless of which mutation they carry.

→ No breaks means fewer ways to go wrong. Safety is not a side note in gene therapy; it is the barrier to the clinic.

What you'd actually be doing

A thesis project in one of these directions, shaped around your interests:

→ Engineering and evolving new recombinase variants

→ Building and validating engineered cell lines and reporter systems

→ Testing therapeutic integration strategies for hereditary disease or cancer

→ Computational discovery of new target sites and enzyme families

Day-to-day: molecular cloning, mammalian cell culture, transfection, flow cytometry, PCR/qPCR, and NGS sample prep.

Who I'm looking for

A BSc in biotechnology engineering, molecular biology, biochemistry, genetics, bioinformatics or a related field. Solid molecular biology fundamentals. The habit of asking why an experiment failed rather than just repeating it.

You do not need prior experience with recombinases. You do need curiosity and persistence; a new lab is a place where things break, and that is part of the training.

What you get

→ A scholarship, with tuition fees covered — so you can focus on the research

→ A thesis project you own, not a fragment of someone else's

→ Direct, daily supervision — this is a small founding team, not a queue

→ Training across the full stack: design → cloning → cells → analysis

→ A brand-new lab, and a real say in how it takes shape

Two positions are open.

To apply — by 15 September 2026: send your CV and a short paragraph on what draws you to this work to [email protected]

Subject line: MSc application — [your name]

Admission is through Braude's research MSc in Biotechnology: https://w3.braude.ac.il/bio-research/

• Questions before applying are welcome. Happy to talk it through.