Dr.Ilona Darlyuk-Saadon is a Senior Research Fellow in the laboratory of Prof. David Engelberg, in the MMID programme since 2015. She was awarded B.Sc. degree with distinction in Biology in 2005 from the Israel Institute of Technology- Technion, Israel. She obtained her MSc in Biology and Ph.D. in Medical sciences, both from the Technion. Her Ph.D. research focused on signal transduction pathways, primarily the JNK cascade, using advanced molecular and biochemical techniques in the context of mammalian cells in culture.

After her doctoral studies, she worked for one year as a Research Fellow before moving with her family to Singapore. During the last six years. Dr. Ilona Saadon’s main interest has been the MAP Kinase p38α, a close member of JNK in the MAP Kinase family. She studies the involvement of this protein in inflammatory diseases using embryonic stem (ES) cells and transgenic mice; both systems were established by her. As the lead-PI in this Intra-CREATE seed grant Dr. Ilona Darlyuk-Saadon studies the two transgenic mouse systems and focuses on the entailing downstream molecular and biochemical events that contribute to the aetiology of lung diseases.