Mayana Zatz

Mayana Zatz (Tel Aviv, July 16, 1947) is a Brazilian molecular biologist and geneticist. She is a professor at the University of São Paulo, currently being its Research dean.

Biography

Professor Zatz's accomplishments have been recognized and she has received many awards and prizes, including the 2000 L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science and the 2001 Claudia Woman of the Year Award, by Claudia Magazine.

Born in Israel in 1947, she moved to France with her family and lived there until the age of seven years. Mayana arrived in Brazil with her family in 1955. She obtained a BA in Biology at University of São Paulo in 1968, a M.Sc. and a D.Sc. in Biological Sciences from University of São Paulo in 1970 and 1974, respectively, her post-doctorate in Medical Genetics at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), in 1977, and her livre-docência from University of São Paulo, in 1987. Mayana became interested in the study of muscular dystrophies when she was at college and followed a patient from a family with a high incidence of the condition, and who wanted to start a family.