Queen’s University biochemist Peter Davies has been awarded a Lady Davis Visiting Professorship to undertake research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Rehovot, Israel.

“This professorship will give me a wonderful opportunity to work with my long-time collaborator, Ido Braslavsky, who is on the faculty at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,” says Dr. Davies. “Our two labs have been undertaking research projects together for almost 10 years now in an effort to understand how antifreeze proteins in animals, plants and microorganisms bind to ice and stop the ice from growing.”

Dr. Davies is an expert in antifreeze proteins and has spent much of his research career unraveling the mystery of why some organisms, including insects and fish, don’t freeze in the winter.

Dr. Braslavsky is an expert on ice physics and the instrumentation needed to control and manipulate ice growth so that the effect of antifreeze proteins can be observed – in some cases by labeling the proteins with fluorescent tags. One instrument that Dr. Braslavsky has designed is a microfluidics cell that allows the solution surrounding an ice crystal to be changed without perturbing the ice.

The Lady Davis Fellowship Trust was established 40 years ago to provide an opportunity for leading scientists and scholars to participate in research at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at the Technion Institute of Technology in Haifa.