Debbie Lindell (Hebrew: דבי לינדל) is the Dresner Chair in Life Sciences and Medicine Professor at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology in the Faculty of Biology. She is known for her work on the interactions between viruses and their hosts in marine environments.
Education Lindell was born in Australia and grew up loving the ocean. Lindell earned her B.Sc. from Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She then worked as a technician on a project involving coral reef and fish and decided she wanted to pursue research in marine science. She went on to earn an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. from Hebrew University of Jerusalem, followed by postdoctoral research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Sallie W. Chisholm.
Research Lindell's early research was on the succession of phytoplankton in the Gulf of Aqaba and nitrogen-related gene expression by the cyanobacterium Synechococcus. to assess their nitrogen physiology in the ocean. Her subsequent work examined the transfer of genes between phytoplankton and marine viruses, and the evolution of host-virus interactions as evident from the analysis of gene expression in bacteria infected by a virus. Her research also investigates the genetic factors leading to resistance and long-term coexistence of phytoplankton and viruses. In more recent work Lindell’s team developed a genetic system for cyanophages to investigate the functional benefit of viral genes, including those horizontally acquired from cellular organisms. Lindell’s team also developed single-virus and single-cell methods to measure cyanophage abundance and infection patterns to assess their impact on cyanobacterial communities in the ocean. In response to the COVID-19 disease, Lindell was part of a team who filed a patent for a reusable mask that is designed to prevent infection by viruses. As of 2026, Lindell has an h-index of 38 with over 9000 citations to her published works.
Selected publications
Awards and honors In 2007 Lindell was awarded the Yigal Alon Fellowship by the Israel Council for Higher Education. In 2009 Lindell received the Krill Prize for scientific excellence from the Wolf Foundation. In 2022 Lindell received the “Morton and Beverley Rechler” Prize for Excellence in Research. Lindell received the G. Evelyn Hutchinson Award from the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography in 2026. Lindell is an elected fellow of both the European and American Academies of Microbiology (EAM and AAM) and an elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO).
References
External links
Lindell Lecture at Hutchinson Award Presentation on YouTube Lindell's page at the Technion Faculty of Biology website