About the Authors
Amit Kessel
Amit Kessel obtained his Ph.D. in Computational Biology at Tel-Aviv University. After a short postdoctoral training at Columbia University, he co-founded ES-IS Technologies, a biotech company, where he also served as the Head of Innovative R&D. Today Dr. Kessel is studying protein evolution at Tel Aviv University.
Nir Ben-Tal
Nir Ben-Tal studied Biology, Chemistry and Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and obtained his DSc in Chemistry from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. After postdoctoral training at Columbia University, he joined Tel Aviv University as group leader, and became Full Professor in 2007. In collaboration with his colleagues, he develops and uses computational tools to study protein structure, function, dynamics, and evolution, and also contributes to drug discovery. For example, his team has been developing the ConSurf methodology and web server for identification of functional regions in proteins (https://consurf.tau.ac.il/). Presently, his studies are mostly focused on a fundamental question in molecular evolution, namely, the way in which novel protein architectures and functions emerge.
This is the second literary collaboration of Dr. Kessel and Prof. Ben-Tal. In 2010, they co-authored a textbook called Introduction to Proteins: Structure, Function, and Motion. The second edition of the book, which came out in 2018, is used worldwide to teach protein structural biology. Dr. Kessel and Prof. Ben-Tal also co-teach two graduate courses on structural biology and the origin of life on Earth.