Isabella Karakis is an environmental epidemiologist and the head of the department of environmental epidemiology the Israel Ministry of Health. She earned her PhD degree at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Epidemiology of infectious diseases and spent two years in a post-doctoral fellowship at the School of Public Health at Haifa University in the field of environmental epidemiology. Dr. Karakis is holding an MD degree from Narimanov University Medical School, Baku, Azerbaijan.
At her work, Dr. Karakis is closely working with the policy makers, handling real-life questions related to hazardous environment in Israel on a daily basis. Dr. Karakis has founded the climate change adaptation program of medical system in Israel and initiated dozens of database and field studies in environmental epidemiology at a national and local level. Human biomonitoring represents one of her leading research questions.
Dr. Karakis has published multiple papers and is currently teaching a course in environmental epidemiology for graduate students at the Ben-Gurion University.