Aviva Katz PhD is a Research Scientist at the Department of Molecular Biology and Ecology of Plants, Tel Aviv University. She joined the laboratory of Prof Nir Ohad studying epigenetic regulation of plant development and stem cell differentiation mediated by Polycomb proteins. To understand how Polycomb function has evolved during land plant evolution, this question is addressed in two model plants, Arabidopsis as a representative of flowering plants and the moss Physcomitrella patens, as a representative of early terrestrial plants.

Dr. Katz together with Prof Ohad and Prof. Yalosvky developed the Bimolecular fluorescence complementation assay (BiFC) in plants to study protein-protein interactions.