Dr. Yael Kapon was awarded a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship to pursue her research on prebiotic self-assembly in realistic planetary environments at the California Institute of Technology’s (Caltech) Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences.

Yael earned her PhD in applied physics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem under the supervision of Professor Yossi Paltiel. Her doctoral research focused on chiral-induced spin selectivity, exploring how physical spin interactions at the molecular scale can influence biological recognition, magnetic interfaces, and self-assembly. Her doctoral dissertation, “Dynamic Spin Interactions in Chiral Systems,” was awarded the Hans Wiener Prize for Doctoral Dissertation.

Following her PhD, Yael was a postdoctoral researcher in Professor Moran Frenkel-Pinter’s group at the Hebrew University, where she studied the self-assembly of prebiotic molecular building blocks under plausible early-Earth conditions.

At Caltech, Yael will investigate how membrane-forming lipids could arise under realistic early Earth and planetary conditions, and how such assemblies could acquire functional properties relevant to the origins of life.

Yael is a recipient of various awards, including the Zuckerman STEM Leadership Program fellowship and the Council of Higher Education Scholarship for Female PhD Students in STEM.

Selected publications:

Kapon, Y., Saha, A., et al. “Evidence to New Enantio-Specific Interaction Force in Chiral Biomolecules.” Chem 7, 2787–2799 (2021).

Kapon, Y., Merhav, D., et al. “Controlling Amyloid Assembly Dynamics Using Spin Interfaces.” ACS Nano 19, 28326–28334 (2025).

Kapon, Y., Kammerbauer, F., et al. “Effects of Chiral Polypeptides on Skyrmion Stability and Dynamics.” Nano Letters 25, 1 (2024).