People – Avi Shpigelman Lab

Assoc. Prof. Avi Shpigelman

I have received my B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. from the faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering at the Technion. After finishing the Ph.D. under the supervision of Prof. Yoav Livney on polyphenol nano-encapsulation I have stayed for 2 years in the Laboratory of Food Technology with Prof. Hendrickx and Prof. Van Loey working on the effects of processing plant-based materials. In 2014 I have returned to Israel and joined the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering, Technion where I lead the lab of novel food & bioprocessing.

We work on trying to better understand the relationship between processing, the structure of food components, and the functional outcome.

In terms of processing, we focus on high pressure-based technologies (HPP, HPH), while in terms of health-promoting components, we currently focus on polyphenolic compounds.

Dr. Zoya Okun

E-mail: gzoya@bfe.technion.ac.il Linkedin

Zoya received her B.Sc. in Chemistry from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2004), afterwards she joined Prof. Zeev Gross group at the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry, Technion and completed her M.Sc (Cum Laude) in 2007 and Ph.D (Israel Chemical Society prize for excellence) in 2012, her research focused on synthesis and establishment of structure-activity relationship of catalytic antioxidants in chemical and biological systems in the models of neurodegenerative diseases and diabetes. During her studies, she has received numerous prestigious awards. After working a few years in startup companies in the fields of energy and drug development, in 2015 Zoya joined Asst. Prof. Avi Shpigelman’s group as the lab manager. Zoya is involved in the majority of projects and focuses on method development, and testing new research paths.