Polina Lishko

Polina V. Lishko studies the cellular mechanisms that make fertilization possible: an event that leads to an appearance of new life. Her team uses innovative technologies to study tiny electrical currents across a sperm cell that the latter uses in order to find and fertilize and egg. By combining biophysics, biochemistry and cell biology approaches, her team works on the development of nonhormonal unisex contraceptives. In addition to being a Pew Scholar and a Sloan Fellow, Lishko has received both the Margaret Oakley Dayhoff Award in Biophysics andthe  Matthew P. Hardy Young Andrologist award from American Society of Andrology. She received a Ph.D. in biophysics from the Bogomoletz Institute of Physiology at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. In 2012, she joined the faculty at UC Berkeley.