The Institute of Evolution (IoE)

Established in the University of Haifa at 1977 by prof. Eviatar Nevo, includes 12 faculty members (members of the Department of Evolutionary and Environmental Biology) and more than 20 affiliated scientists with PhD degrees.


Institute News


Congratulations to Assaf Distelfeld for his Promotion to Full Professor!


Assaf is a scientist at the cutting edge in the field of the genome of Emmer wheat. The Emmer wheat was discovered by Aharon Aharonsohn who published a seminal paper in 1910 in which he proposed that wild wheat would become a source of novel traits. Since then wheat has been a pillar of Israeli plant science academic research in general and the Institute of Evolution in particular. Assaf represents a new generation of wheat researchers and his leadership helped drive forward wheat research in Israel and in the international community. We are fortunate and proud that Assaf recently joined the Institute of Evolution!

Assaf- May the successes that have come your way today will lead you to even bigger achievements in the future!

Prof. Ido Izhaki


Congratulations to Assaf Distelfeld for his promotion to the rank of Full professor. Since his recent arrival from Tel Aviv University, Assaf has made significant contributions, either by his remarkable publications, or the recruitment of impressive number of graduate students, and most of all, heading the Institute of Evolution

Prof. Sagi Snir


The Institute of Evolution is proud to congratulate Sagi Snir on receiving full professorship!

Prof. Snir’s achievements made substantial contributions to computational evolutionary biology by developing new powerful methods for phylogenetic reconstruction (quartet methods and supertrees), identification of horizontal gene transfer and reconstruction of phylogenetic networks; and using the “universal pacemaker” approach for accurate analysis of epigenetic phenomena (DNA methylation, aging and tumor evolution).

Congratulations to Prof. Assaf Distelfeld and Dr. Valentyna Klymiuk, a recent alumna of the Institute for the Nature paper https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2961-x!

Congratulations to our member Prof. Tzion Fahima who was recognized by the US-Israel Binational Agricultural Research and Development Fund (BARD), as world-class contributors to combating food insecurity.

Scientific Seminars

The presented lectures deal mainly with the hot topics in evolutionary biology, molecular genetics, genomics, and ecology. The seminars are delivered by expert lecturers and distinguished visitors in a relaxed environment.

At this point, the seminars will be held online on Mondays at 12 pm .

2020/21 seminar series:

seminars 2020_21

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