Yoav Bauman was born and raised in Jerusalem. During high school, Yoav became increasingly interested in the Life Sciences and subsequently decided to major in Biology.

Following his military service as a combat soldier he started his studies in the Life Sciences undergraduate program at the Hebrew University where he graduted magna cum laude.  During his studies, Yoav became acquainted with the field of Immunology and was amazed by the complexity of the immune system and how little is known about the interaction of immune cells with pathogens. In order to pursue these topics, Yoav joined Ofer Mandelboim’s laboratory in the third year of his B.Sc studies and continued to his PhD in the direct track. Mandelboim’s lab investigates the biology of Natural Killer (NK) cells which are part of the innate immune system. NK cells provide the first line of defense against virally infected or cancerous cells by rapidly killing these hazardous cells. NK cell recognition of the virally infected cells is the first and pivotal process in the execution of NK cell killing.

Yoav’s research focused on viral mechanisms hampering the ability of NK cell recognition of infected cells, thus enabling the virus to evade the immune system.

Yoav’s latest findings demonstrate how two viruses of the human polyomaviruses family, found in the majority of the human population ,use anmiRNA mediated mechanism to evade NK cell attack and remain undetected by our immune system recently published in the Cell Host & Microbe Journal. Yoav is currently broadening the scope of his research by investigating the novel field of NK cell recognition of bacteria.