Alina is a marine microbiologist who completed her PhD in the lab of Prof. Oded Béjà, where she discovered a new family of light-sensing proteins, Heliorhodopsins.
In a conversation from Humboldt University in Berlin, where she is currently doing her post-doctorate, Alina fascinatingly connects algae, tanning, blindness, and a certain type of crustacean. Above all, she deeply believes in the power of natural curiosity and the joy of making science accessible to everyone 😊
P.S. – If you ask her how she transitioned from bio-medical sciences to marine microbiology, she will tell you it was a stroke of luck and a coincidence.
Alina studied and researched everything related to the human body and took a course in marine microbiology at the Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences in Eilat where she met Professor Béjà, a faculty member in the Department of Biology. That course eventually changed her entire professional trajectory, opening up a fascinating world of environment, ecology, and an inextricable web of bacteria, and became a kind of love story…
Tune in to the podcast to hear the full interview and even a musical interlude with a ukulele, click here: https://alumni.technion.ac.il/podcasts/alina/
