Dr. Salon is an anthropologist and paleo-geneticist, who established a unique laboratory dealing with the genomes of prehistoric and protohistoric populations
Dr. Vivian Salon recently won the prestigious Rosalind Franklin Award for Young Researchers for 2022, awarded by the American Society of Genetics and the Grover Association. The prize is awarded once every three years, and was awarded to two other female researchers from France and the USA.
Dr. Vivian Salon is an anthropologist and paleo-geneticist, researcher at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine and at the Dan David Center for the Study of Human History. She studied for a bachelor's and master's degree at Tel Aviv University. She did her doctoral studies in the laboratory of Dr. Svante Pébo, an evolutionary geneticist from the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany. There, she got to work in a variety of archaeological sites, including the Denisova Cave, where the ancient Denisovan man was discovered. Salon has developed a special and innovative method for extracting and sequencing ancient DNA from dirt, which enables the discovery of fascinating findings even in sites where there are no human remains, at least not to the appearance.
She also did her post-doctorate period at the Max Planck Institute, and after the end of this period she returned to Israel and joined the faculty of Tel Aviv University. She established a unique laboratory that deals with the genomes of prehistoric and protohistoric populations, with a focus on ancient populations in the Levant - a transition region for migrations throughout human history and one of the oldest agricultural centers in the world. Recently she even took part in writing an international code of ethics for researchers dealing with ancient DNA.
Over the years, Salon won the Dan David Award for Young Researchers (2017), the Otto-Hahn Medal (2018), the Otto-Hahn Award (2018) and the Alon Scholarship for Outstanding New Senior Academic Staff (2020). Also, these days she was included in the list of 40 promising young people under the age of 40 according to the newspaper The Marker.
Dr. Vivian Salon: "I am very happy to win this prestigious award, which gives me as a young researcher a lot of wind in my sails for many more years of significant and fascinating research in the field of paleogenetics. This is an innovative field in which there is more hidden than visible. With the trust given to me by the award committee, I intend to go forward and develop more and more tools that will help us crack the secrets of ancient civilizations that were and are no longer there. Rosalind Franklin was a groundbreaking scientist from the beginning, who at the time was not recognized by the establishment due to gender and social biases, and this award is a commemorative project aimed at correcting these biases."
More of the topic in Hayadan:
