The Medical School announces the appointment of Associate Professor Joseph Laufer as the Founding Chair of the Department of Paediatrics.

Joseph Laufer is the Clinical Lead of Paediatrics at Sheba Medical Center in Israel for the St George’s, University of London medical programme.   He is also an Attending Senior Physician in the Paediatric Nephrology Unit and the Paediatric Department of Sackler School of Medicine at Tel Aviv University, where he also teaches Paediatrics.  For many years he served as chairman of the committee for the joint written examination in Paediatrics for the Universities of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa and Beer Sheba.

In 1985 he was awarded a research fellowship from the National Kidney Foundation of Southern California and for two years was a Clinical and Research Fellow in Paediatric Nephrology at the UCLA Centre for Health Sciences.  In 1996 he became the Director of the Paediatric Community Medicine Unit of Sheba Medical Center, responsible for developing and coordinating the activities of the Division of Paediatrics within the community.  From 2001 to 2007 he served as Deputy Director of the Department of Paediatrics at The Edmond and Lily Safra Children’s Hospital at Sheba Medical Center.

Joseph is an Israeli Board Certified Nephrologist, both in Adult and Paediatric Nephrology and Hypertension.  His research focuses on the in situ expression of complement genes in various organs including kidney, intestine and mammary gland and the regulation of these genes, in vitro, in macrophages.