 |
Doron M. Behar, MD, is a graduate in medicine of the Technion, Israel institute of Technology, where he also completed a PhD program in population genetics. He completed medical residencies in Internal and Critical Care Medicine at the Rambam Medical Center. Dr. Behar’s initial focus in population genetics examined Jewish ancestry, first focusing on Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA lineages throughout the range of the Jewish Diaspora. More recently, he has investigated the genome-wide structure of the Jewish people. Dr. Behar’s work in the field of “archeaogenetics” has also extended to the study of worldwide populations, particularly to populations of Near Eastern and African ancestry. |
 |
Aaron Brody is Robert and Kathryn Riddle Associate Professor of Bible and Archaeology at the Pacific School of Religion and Director of the Badè Museum of Biblical Archaeology. Dr. Brody’s primary research interests include archaeological interpretations of the society and economy of ancient Israel and its neighbors, archaeology and the study of religions, and deep-water archaeology. He has conducted fieldwork at Canaanite and Philistine sites on the Mediterranean coast of Israel and has participated in projects in the Negev and Akko Plain. His writings include Each Man Cried Out to His God: The Specialized Religion of Canaanite and Phoenician Seafarers (1998). |
 |
John Efron holds the Koret Chair in Jewish History in the Department of History at the University of California at Berkeley, where he is a specialist in the cultural and social history of German Jewry. Dr. Efron’s publications include Medicine and the German Jews: A History, and the monograph Defenders of the Race (Yale University Press), a study of the role of race science in nineteenth and twentieth century Jewish culture. He has also written on Jewish political and popular culture in Central Europe, on Yiddish political satire in Poland and Israel, and on the role of sport in the modern Jewish experience. |
 |
Marcus Feldman is the Burnet C. and Mildred Finley Wohlford Professor of Biology at Stanford University. His research uses applied mathematics and computer modeling to simulate and analyze the process of evolution. Specific areas of research include the evolution of complex genetic systems that can undergo both natural selection and recombination, the evolution of learning and communication, and human genomic evolution. He is one of the originators of the quantitative theory of cultural evolution, which he applies to issues in human behavior. Dr. Feldman has been awarded honorary doctorates by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and by Tel Aviv University, and he was a recipient of the Dan David Prize for 2011. |
 |
Susan Kahn is Associate Director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. Her book, Reproducing Jews: A Cultural Account of Assisted Conception in Israel, is a recipient of a National Jewish Book Award and the Eileen Basker Memorial Prize, awarded by the Society of Medical Anthropology for outstanding research in gender and health. Dr. Kahn’s research interests include medical anthropology, kinship studies, Israel studies, and anthropology of the Middle East. In addition to her administrative responsibilities, she is currently studying the relationship between people and dogs in the Land of Israel from ancient times to the present. |
 |
Roy King is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at Stanford University School of Medicine. His current research centers on the use of human
genetic haploid systems such as the Y chromosome to understand the prehistory of
human migrations particularly since the beginning of the Holocene. This work
includes investigations of correlations with human symbolic material culture, focusing on the visual artistic realm. Dr. King is also interested in the issues and ethical implications of the social construction of race and ethnicity in light of recent work demonstrating an enhanced capacity to differentiate populations using genotypes. |
 |
Arno Motulsky is Professor Emeritus in the Departments of Genome Sciences and
Medicine at the University of Washington. Dr. Motulsky was a founder of the field of
pharmacogenetics, which studies the role of genetic variation in response to drugs.
Much of his research has focused on heredity-environment interactions in the
pathogenesis of disease. Dr. Motulsky has long been interested in the social impact of
human genetics, including genetic testing, and he has participated in various national
committees dealing with these issues. He is the recipient of many honors, including
election to the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the American
Association of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. |
 |
Shelley Reuter is Associate Professor of Sociology at Concordia University. Her research interests are in feminist sociology of medicine and particularly the production of medical knowledge in relation to disease and cultural classifications, medical racialism, gender, contemporary and feminist theories, and embodiment. She is the author of Narrating Social Order: Agoraphobia and the Politics of Classification (University of Toronto Press, 2007) and is currently performing an exploration of biocitizenship and medical-genetic responsibilization in the history of Tay-Sachs disease in the US and UK, and an examination of academic women’s reproductive decision-making, venturing into questions of reproductive choice, workfamily balance, and social policy, with specific emphasis on the issue of motherhood and academia. |
 |
Neil Risch is the Lamond Family Foundation Distinguished Professor in Human Genetics and Director of the Institute for Human Genetics at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Risch, a statistical geneticist and genetic epidemiologist, performs both theoretical and applied research as part of the effort to identify the genetic basis for a broad range of diseases. He has also been interested in the relationship between patterns of disease occurrence and the genetic history of the Ashkenazi Jewish population. Dr. Risch was previously Professor of Genetics at Stanford, with appointments in Statistics and Health Research & Policy, before starting in his current position in 2005. |
 |
Elad Ziv, MD, is Associate Professor in Residence at the University of California, San Francisco, where he is part of the Departments of Medicine and Epidemiology & Biostatistics. His research focuses on the identification and analysis of genetic factors that underlie human diseases and other complex traits. Dr. Ziv has extensively studied the genetics of disease in populations of mixed ancestry, such as African Americans and Latinos, particularly in relation to cancer susceptibility and response to cancer treatment. His work has included studies in various populations of genetic influences on breast cancer risk, mammography density, and responses to breast cancer therapies, as well as on a variety of blood and biomarker traits. |