image: Prof. Carmit Levy of Tel Aviv University, winner of the Young Investigator Award at the International Congress of the Society for Melanoma Research. view more
Credit: American Friends of Tel Aviv University (AFTAU)
Tel Aviv University's Prof. Carmit Levy received the prestigious Young Investigator Award at the 16th International Congress of the Society for Melanoma Research, held November 20-23 in Salt Lake City, Utah, for her "contributions to melanoma research that significantly exceeded the average for this career stage."
Sponsored by the Melanoma Research Foundation, the award is presented to an independent researcher within the first five years of his or her career for discoveries about the mechanisms driving melanoma that have had an undeniable impact on cancer research.
"Melanoma can be devastating, creeping up on a person years after initial malignant transformation," says Prof. Karen Avraham, vice dean of TAU's Sackler Faculty of Medicine. "Prof. Levy's research has discovered key elements of melanoma metastasis and is laying the groundwork for future therapies. We at Tel Aviv University continue to take great pride in her and her team's remarkable research in cancer development, specifically melanoma."
Prof. Levy's lab is located at the Department of Human Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry at TAU's Sackler Faculty of Medicine.
"I am profoundly excited and honored to be awarded the Society for Melanoma Research Young Investigator Award for 2019," said Prof. Levy after the ceremony. "The Society for Melanoma Research is an international organization that centers around the innovative melanoma research being done worldwide. I began my scientific career attending the society's conferences with these world-leading scientists as my inspiration, so I consider it an outstanding professional achievement to be among the eight scientists who have received this award since its establishment, and to be acknowledged for our contribution to melanoma research.
"Upon establishing my lab at TAU, we discovered pivotal mechanisms in melanoma metastasis initiation, which now opens horizons for new drugs to be used for the prevention of melanoma metastases," Prof. Levy continued. "I am proud to contribute to the global effort cancer researchers are making, day and night around the world, to overcome this devastating disease. As I always say, this is hard teamwork."
The Society for Melanoma Research is an all-volunteer group of scientists working to find the mechanisms responsible for melanoma and, consequently, new therapies for this cancer. It contributes to advances in melanoma research by bringing together researchers in a noncompetitive manner to unite the scientific community.
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American Friends of Tel Aviv University supports Israel's most influential, comprehensive and sought-after center of higher learning, Tel Aviv University (TAU). TAU is recognized and celebrated internationally for creating an innovative, entrepreneurial culture on campus that generates inventions, startups and economic development in Israel. TAU is ranked ninth in the world, and first in Israel, for producing start-up founders of billion-dollar companies, an achievement that surpassed several Ivy League universities. To date, 2,500 US patents have been filed by Tel Aviv University researchers -- ranking TAU #1 in Israel, #10 outside of the US and #66 in the world.