Prof. Zvi Hayouka was born in Jerusalem, Israel in 1979. He performed all his studies at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Zvi obtained his PhD in Chemistry in 2011 (Summa cum laude). In 2012 as a Fulbright scholar, he moved to the chemistry department at the University of Wisconsin-Madiosn to Prof. Samuel Gellman’s lab, where he designed and characterized novel antimicrobial copolymers and peptides. In 2014 he joined the Institute of Biochemistry Food science and Nutrition at the Hebrew University as a faculty member and established his own research lab that focuses on the development of novel antimicrobial agents to tackle pathogenic bacteria (https://biochem-food-nutrition.agri.huji.ac.il/zvihayouka).

His research group combines the fields of organic chemistry, peptide chemistry, food microbiology and biochemistry to design and evaluate novel peptide-based antimicrobial agents for food and clinical applications. Zvi is a member of several scientific committees and was awarded several prestigious prizes as Levine-Jortner Award from the Israel Chemical Society for excellent PhD students (2008), Dimitris Chorafas Prize for excellent PhD students (2009), The Schlomiuk prize for outstanding PhD thesis, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2011), Fulbright Post-doctoral Fellowship (2012), Kaye award for Innovation from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2022). Zvi has published 77 peer reviewed publications and 10 patents applications. In the last three years he has established three startup companies in the area of food safety Prevera and Bountica and Pepticore for antibiotic mimetic.