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Ashraf Brik

Ashraf Brik is an Israeli chemist and professor at the Technion, known for the chemical synthesis of proteins.

Chemical synthesis of proteinsSynthesis of ubiquitin conjugatesResearch on post-translational modifications

Occupation: researcher, chemist
Education: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology

The story of Ashraf Brik's life

Ashraf Brik was born in 1973 and grew up in Abu Snan in northern Israel. He was one of 10 children.

He earned a B.Sc. in chemistry at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in 1996 and an M.Sc. at the Technion in 1998. He finished his doctorate in 2001 in a joint program of the Technion and the Scripps Research Institute. He then did postdoctoral work at Scripps, where he worked on the synthesis of glycoproteins and on enzyme inhibitors, including for HIV protease.

In 2007 he joined the chemistry department at Ben-Gurion University. He became an associate professor in 2011 and a full professor in 2012. He later moved to the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry at the Technion, where he holds the Jordan and Irene Tark Chair.

His lab develops methods to make proteins with modifications added after translation, with a focus on ubiquitin conjugates. The group also designs molecules that target enzymes linked to disease. In 2024 he was elected to the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.