Prof. Tali Mass

Tali Mass completed her B.Sc. degree at the Israeli Maritime College in Michmoret in 2003, and subsequently earned her M.Sc. in Life Sciences from Bar-Ilan University in 2005. She then completed her Ph.D. in 2010 in the Department of Evolution, Systematics, and Ecology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Between 2010 and 2014, she conducted her postdoctoral research at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University in the United States, under the supervision of Prof. Paul Falkowski.

Since joining the University of Haifa in 2014 as a lecturer in the Department of Marine Biology, Tali Mass has advanced rapidly along the academic track. In 2018 she was promoted to Senior Lecturer with tenure, in 2021 she became an Associate Professor, and in 2024 she was appointed Full Professor. Alongside her roles as a researcher and instructor, she serves as the Head of the Electron Microscopy Unit at the university, is an active member of academic and administrative committees, and contributes as an editor and reviewer for leading scientific journals. Throughout her academic career, she has led extensive international collaborations, published numerous articles in high-impact journals, and supervised a new generation of students and young researchers in the fields of biomineralization, marine biology, and climate-change research.

Tali Mass’s research focuses on the biological, molecular, and biophysical mechanisms that enable corals to build their calcium carbonate skeletons, and on how these processes are influenced by changing environmental conditions. She investigates the roles of the proteins that make up the organic matrix of the coral skeleton, the pathways of crystal formation, and the mechanisms underlying the formation of initial mineral precursors during early developmental stages. Her work integrates genomics and transcriptomics, high-resolution imaging, biochemistry, and ecology to understand how corals adapt to extreme variations in temperature, pH, and light. In addition, she studies mechanisms of coral acclimatization and resilience, and the impacts of climate change on the future of coral reefs and the ecosystems that depend on them.