Prof. Idan Menashe received a BSc in Medical Lab Sciences with distinction from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), Beer-Sheva, Israel. He then moved to the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, to do his MSc in Population Genetics, and a PhD in Human Genetics and Bioinformatics, under the supervision of Prof. Doron Lancet. Both his MSc and PhD theses focused on the genetic basis of human olfactory variability. During his PhD, he earned the prestigious Levi Eshkol fellowship from the Israeli Ministry of Science.

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In January 2007, Prof. Menashe joined the Biostatistics Branch of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics (DCEG) at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) as a post-doctoral fellow. At the NCI, Prof. Menashe has led several interdisciplinary projects aiming at understanding the genetic basis of different human malignancies, and established his expertise in the field of pathways analysis of large ‘omics’ datasets. During his post-doc fellowship, Prof. Menashe won several prestigious awards and published tens of papers in a broad range of scientific journals.

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In 2011, Prof. Menashe joined MindSpec, an independent, non-profit organization that focuses on genetics and bioinformatics research of neurodevelopmental conditions. As a leading scientist in this organization, he led studies on diverse aspects of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and provided biostatistics guidance to other projects demonstrating the utility of the company's databases.

 

In October 2012, Prof. Menashe joined the Department of Public Health in the Faculty of Health Sciences at BGU as a Senior Lecturer (Assistant Professor). At BGU, he established a unique research team that study different aspects of genetic and epidemiology of ASD and other human complex diseases using state-of-the-art statistical and bioinformatics approaches. Prof. Menashe is a co-founder of the Negev Autism Center, an interdisciplinary initiative of scientists from BGU and clinicians from the Soroka university medical center (SUMC) to promote autism research at the Negev. A major outcome of this initiative is the Hospital-University-Based (HUB) database of autism which contains comprehensive sociodemographic, behavioral, clinical, and biological data on all children diagnosed with ASD at SUMC and their family members. The wealth and depth of the data in the HUB database makes it a “goldmine” to study diverse aspect of ASD and serve as a resource for many national and international collaborations. Prof. Menashe is leading the genetic and epidemiology studies in this Negev Autism Center.

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In addition to his research projects, Prof. Menashe also teaches several courses of advanced biostatistics and epidemiology for graduate and MPH students as part of his duties as a faculty in the public health department of BGU.