These competitive grants reflect RTICC’s mission to bridge the gap between basic science, engineering, and clinical oncology under one umbrella. Each grant provides $30,000 per year for two academic years, enabling promising young investigators to advance state-of-the-art cancer research that integrates diverse perspectives, methods, and expertise.

With an emphasis on projects co-supervised by Technion faculty members from different yet synergistic disciplines, the Collaborative Grants aim to accelerate the development of transformative cancer research and nurture the next generation of multidisciplinary leaders in the field. These outstanding projects exemplify the spirit of the Collaborative Grants program: harnessing multidisciplinary partnerships to advance impactful cancer research.

The 2025–2026 RTICC Collaborative Grant recipients and their research topics are:

Post Doctoral Fellow Pallab Karjee: “Selective Targeting of DNA Damage Repair Pathways with Novel Macrocyclic Peptides for Cancer Therapy”.

Supervisors: Prof. Ashraf Brik, Faculty of Chemistry; Prof. Nabieh Ayoub, Faculty of Biology.

Post Doctoral Fellow Doaa Naffaa: “Dynamic Mapping of Tumor–Bacteria Interactions: Multiscale Imaging for Precision Cancer Therapy”.

Supervisors: Dr. Katrien Vandoorne, Faculty of Biomedical Engineering; Prof. Ramez Daniel, Faculty of Biomedical Engineering.

Post Doctoral Fellow Talal Salti: “Develop a multimodal approach to combine molecular, histological, and medical record data to improve Basal Cell Carcinoma non-melanocytic periocular skin cancers treatment assignment”.

Supervisors: Prof. Nitza Goldenberg-Cohen, Bnai Zion Medical Center; Prof. Yonatan Savir, Faculty of Medicine.

Post Doctoral Fellow Samantha Lish: “From Adhesion to Invasion: A Biophysical Theory of Cancer-Cell Invasion”.

Supervisors: Asst. Prof. Ram Adar, Faculty of Physics; Prof. Haguy Wolfenson, Faculty of Medicine.

Dr. Yuval Mogilevsky: “Site-specific ECM Microenvironments Regulate Melanoma Aggressiveness”.

Supervisors: Prof. Yuval Shaked, Faculty of Medicine; Dr. Emily Avitan-Hersh, Rambam Health Care Campus.

Ahron Tzvi Verschleisser: “Direct Measurement of the Tumor Microenvironment Cell Surface Forces in Cancer Progression Using Spiropyran Mechanophore Technology”.

Supervisors: Dr. Joshua Grolman, Faculty of Materials Science; Prof. Sigal Savaldi-Goldstein, Faculty of Biology.

Avi Pinchanski: “Overcoming ECM-Mediated Immune Exclusion in Sarcoma Using GD2 CAR-T Cells and LOX Inhibition”.

Supervisors: Dr. Ofrat Beyar Katz, Rambam Health Care Campus; Dr. Rostislav Novak, Rambam Health Care Campus.

Shimrit Hazan: “Characterization of recurrent a-N-terminal histone H2B mutations in cancer”.

Supervisors: Prof. Gil Bar-Sela, Emek Medical Center; Dr. Gilad Barshad, Faculty of Medicine.