Partner 3. Tel-Aviv University (TAU)
Sackler School of Medicine, Department of Physiology and Pharmacology
39040 Ramat-Aviv
59978 TEL-AVIV - Israel

Scientific team

Name	Position		Task
Rafi Korenstein	Full Professor		Team leader
Avi Gover	Full Professor		FEL development
Lydia Avivi	Associate Professor		Cytogenetic techniques
Asher Yahalom	Lecturer		User’s source coordinator
Yosef Yakover	Research Associate		Radiation beam-line design
Michael Kantor	Lab Engineer		Radiation source maintenance

Objectives
The TAU group has complete biological facilities for cytogenetic analysis. It also operates a recently developed FEL in the mm wavelength regime based on an electrostatic accelerator. Demonstrated parameters are: tuneability range 70-130 GHz, power - 10 kW, line width Dn/n < 10-5, pulse duration 3-30 mS. These parameters will be upgraded, and particularly pulse duration will be extended to 1 mS. The upgraded source will permit flexible control of modulation characteristics, pulse duration (pulse energy) and power level (necessary for determining damage threshold and avoiding sample heating and thermal effects). The TAU biological facilities will be used to study samples exposed in other complementary or partly overlapping radiation sources (ENEA, USTUTT). Samples exposed at TAU will also be analyzed by complementary methods (ICEmB-IRECE).
Prof. Rafi Korenstein will serve as the team's leader and coordinate the research to be carried out by the Tel-Aviv University research group. Prof. Avi Gover will supervise the FEL radiation source team, which is expected to deliver radiation of desirable parameters at the biological experiment stand. Prof. Lydia Avivi will be responsible for the cytogenetic evaluation. The TAU team constitutes a synergistic combination of the fields of biophysics, engineering and genetics.

Workplan
The TAU team will mainly contribute to the project workpackages as described below:

Workpackage 2.1 (43 person-months)
TAU will set-up an exposure system at the recently developed FEL facility in Israel for the exposure of human lymphocytes. The exposure of blood cells, the short culturing of lymphocytes and the preparation of nuclei for cytogenetic analysis will be carried out. This will be followed by the analysis based on the FISH assay. In the case of positive results, part of the samples that were irradiated in Israel will be sent to ICEmB for analysis by the MN and Comet assays.

Workpackage 3 (1 person-month)
In addition to the above studies TAU will contribute to the evaluation of a survey on exposure conditions at specific sites where THz-radiation is used.