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B.Sc.Pharm - Hebrew University  2007
M.Sc. - Tel-Aviv University 2009
Ph.D. - Technion Institute   2015
Postdoctoral - MIT   2015-2019

Assistant Professor - Hebrew University   2019-2023

Associate Professor - Hebrew University- Present

 

Born and raised in Haifa. Dr. Amal is married to his art therapist wife, Rageda. They live
with their two children, Sama and Adam. In his spare time, Dr. Amal enjoys reading
books and watching sports.

 

Upon graduating, he began his academic journey at the young age of 17.5 years old,
with a first degree in Pharmacy, from the Hebrew University. From there he moved to
Tel Aviv University for his master’s degree in the Faculty of Medicine, where he
investigated the impact of cannabis on memory and cognition. Upon graduating magna cum laude, he moved to Haifa to the Technion Institute, Department of Chemical Engineering, for his doctorate, during which he researched the diagnosis of cancer and other neurological disorders. With several offers for postdoctoral fellowships, Dr. Amal decided that the next stage of his academic journey would be at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston (MIT). It was there that he started his journey working on the autism spectrum disorder and Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Amal was a Senior Postdoctoral Associate at the Biological Engineering Department at MIT and affiliate in the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. 

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At MIT, the first paper of his postdoctoral research was published in the Journal of Molecular Psychiatry – the leading journal in Psychiatry. It represented the first literature to link nitric oxide with autism spectrum disorder, a key step towards identifying a drug target for the disorder. He has also worked on Alzheimer’s disease, with his research being published in Translational Psychiatry. Dr. Amal was the recipient of many postdoctoral fellowships including the MIT Technion Postdoctoral Fellowship for the Brightest Students.

 

Currently, Haitham is an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Drug Research, Faculty of Medicine at the Hebrew University. He leads a group of scientists that their ultimate goal is to discover therapeutics and biomarkers for autism spectrum disorder, brain disorders, and other diseases.

 

Dr. Amal has received many awards/grants including the US Department of Defense (DoD) grant,
the Israel Science Foundation, the prestigious Krill Prize administered by the Wolf Foundation,
he was listed among the 40 under 40 most promising young people by The Marker Magazine, The
Kaye Innovation Award, the Prusiner Abramsky Neuroscience Award, Maof Research Grant, the
Golda Meir Lectureship Award, and the MIT-Technion Postdoc Fellowship. Just recently, he won
the Eagles Autism Foundation Research Grant. Professor Amal is the first international
scientist to win this prestigious grant!

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In the last 3.5 years an Assistant Professor at HUJI, The Amal Lab published 14 papers and 6
patents. He was the first to show the first link between nitric oxide and ASD published in
Advanced Science. One of the other discoveries showed similar pathological similarities between
ASD and AD pathologies. Based on one of the patents, Dr. Amal established a Company, Point6 Bio
Ltd, with the aim to develop diagnostic tool for ASD based on simple blood and microbiome tests.
Based on the other 5 patents, Dr. Amal signed a research agreement with an American Pharma
Company listed in Nasdaq with the goal to develop a drug to treat ASD.

 

The Amal Group has multinational collaborations including MIT, Scripps Institute in San Diego , and Imperial College London.  

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