Dr. Tzahi Cohen-Karni is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. He received his BSc in Materials Engineering and his BA in Chemistry (both cum laude) from Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel. He continued his education at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, where he obtained his MSc in Chemistry (summa cum laude); his thesis was entitled “Torsional Electromechanics of Carbon Nanotubes.” Dr. Cohen-Karni obtained his PhD in Applied Physics from Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; his thesis was entitled “Nanowire Nanoelectronics: Building Interfaces with Tissue and Cells at the Natural Scale of Biology.” Upon completing his PhD at Harvard, Dr. Cohen-Karni became a JDRF Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratories of Professor Robert Langer and Professor Daniel Kohane at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he worked on the project, “Designing and synthesizing functional materials for cellular interfaces.”

Dr. Cohen-Karni’s research has focused on the unique interfaces between biology and nanoscience and nanotechnology, by applying techniques from chemistry, physics, and materials science to explore the rich world of biology. His interests cover a broad area from the interactions of biomolecules, cells, and tissues with nanostructures (such as nanowires, nanotubes, and nanoparticles), to the electrical properties of tissues and cells interfaced with nanodevices.

Dr. Cohen-Karni is a member of the American Chemical Society, the Materials Research Society, and the Biomedical Engineering Society. He is also a reviewer for Nano Letters, PNAS, the Journal of Physical Chemistry, ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, and PLoS One. In 2012, Dr. Cohen-Karni received the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) Young Chemist Award. He holds one patent.

View a list of Dr. Cohen-Karni’s publications here.