Biography:

Dr. Nurit Argov-Argaman joined the IMGC Scientific Advisory Committee in 2020 and has participated in IMGC Symposia for more than a decade. She trained at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem in nutrition and lipid metabolism. After completing her post-doctoral fellowship at the University of California Davis, she returned to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel and created her lactation and metabolism research group. Her research focus is lactation physiology and its metabolic regulation. The objective of her research group is to obtain knowledge on the nutritional and metabolic regulation of milk fat composition, concentration, and structure. Her research group discovered the role of the mitochondria in regulating the milk fat globule structure and hence the composition of milk fat. Since the mitochondria is susceptible to bioitic and abiotic stressors, her studies have been focusing on the effect of environmental stress on the milk composition and lactation traits of dairy animals and finding nutritional strategies to mitigate these environmental detrimental effects. In her studies, she found strong associations between the milk fat structure and milk composition and hence focuses on the effect of the milk fat structure, e.g. the milk fat globule, on product quality. This association is studied under two aspects: 1) product stability and quality in terms of the content of bioactive constituents, and 2) the effect on the health of the consumer in terms of the digestion and absorption, physiological, immune and metabolic response to milk with varying milk fat globule sizes. Besides this research, Dr. Argov-Argaman develops, and teaches multiple rigorous courses in the BSc and MSc programs in The Animal Science Department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with an emphasis on lactation physiology, animal nutrition and lipid metabolism. Her bibliography is publicly available here.

Email: argov.nurit@mail.huji.ac.il