Zoe Piran

About

I am currently pursuing a postdoc at Genentech and Stanford University, hosted by Aviv Regev and Jure Leskovec. My research focuses on extending biological understanding through experimental-computational synergy. I am particularly excited about moving single-cell biology into the ex-static era—using live-cell measurements to expose spatio-temporal dynamics. By collecting multi-modal dynamic-aware data and designing the counterpart computational tools, I aim to move beyond static representations to a continuous, spatiotemporal understanding of living systems.

I completed my PhD with distinction at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem under the supervision of Mor Nitzan, where my research focused on decoding cellular identities in single-cell data to explore axes of biological variation. I developed computational frameworks to disentangle and reconstruct the multifaceted nature of cellular identity by filtering known biological signals and applying semi-supervised disentanglement methods.

I received my MSc in Physics in 2020 from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, advised by Naftali Tishby and Zohar Ringel. My thesis sat at the interface between information theory and statistical mechanics, suggesting a technique for dimensionality reduction. Previously, I received my BSc with a double major in Physics and Computer Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2018.