Ariel
Tennenhouse

Ariel Tennenhouse is a PhD student in the Lab of Protein Design at the Department of Biomolecular Sciences of the Weizmann Institute of Science under the supervision of Prof. Sarel-Jacob Fleishman.

Ariel studies how antibody sequence and structure determine function and is developing a combination of computational and experimental methods to address this fundamental question.

He employs cutting-edge atomistic protein design and machine-learning methods to design a library of billions of human antibodies and uses high- throughput experimental screening to evaluate their function and stability. Ariel’s work, which is groundbreaking in terms of the massive scale of its computational protein design, aims to shed light on the biophysical underpinnings of processes that are critical for the efficacy of antibodies and to eventually create an ideal library of antibodies for drug discovery. He also hopes to provide tools to accelerate development and lower the cost of life-saving antibody therapeutics.

Ariel was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. He obtained his BSc in chemical biology at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition to his studies, Ariel was deeply involved with the campus Hillel and an organization called Camp Kesem which organizes a free, week-long summer camp for children whose parents have cancer, for which students fundraise throughout the year. He joined the Weizmann Institute in 2019 to study for his MSc in chemistry and now lives in Tel Aviv. In his free time, Ariel enjoys playing Frisbee, reading, seeing friends, and watching TV.