dr. Anat Akiva

About Anat Akiva

Anat’s aim is to help researchers maximize their research potential through advanced electron microscopy, leveraging state-of-the-art infrastructure at the Electron Microscopy center she co-founded together with Prof. Nico Somerdijk.

She was trained as a chemist at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, where she obtained her B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees (cum laude) with a focus on physical chemistry and solid-state NMR. She completed her PhD at the Weizmann Institute of Science under the supervision of Lia Addadi and Steve Weiner, studying bone mineralization in vivo using zebrafish and chicken embryo models.

Her expertise includes advanced imaging and spectroscopy techniques such as in vivo fluorescence confocal microscopy, cryo-(FIB)-SEM, Raman spectroscopy, and µ-spot X-ray spectroscopy. She later joined Eindhoven University of Technology as a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Nico Sommerdijk. At Radboud she established a new research line on Matrix Calcification and served as assistant professor and coordinator of the electron microscopy center until 2022.

Today, Anat combines independent consultancy work with an ongoing academic role, dedicating one day per week to advancing collaborative research through electron microscopy.

Education

• University Teaching qualification (BKO)
• Eindhoven University of Technology -Postdoctoral fellow
• Weizmann Institute of Science - Ph.D.
• Technion - Israel Institute of Technology - B.Sc and M.Sc (cum laude)

Personal prizes & awards

• NWO-VENI (2019)
• Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship (2018)
• National Postdoctoral Award Program for Advancing Women in Science - the Weizmann Institute of Science (2017)
• Lev Margulis national Prize for outstanding research in microscopy (2015)