Israeli scientist growing meat in a lab gets rare honor in Washington

An Israeli biomedical engineer who created cultured meat technology has been inducted as a fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering.

Yaakov Nahmias of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem was honored in a ceremony Monday in Washington, DC. The top 2 percent of biomedical engineers are accepted to the institute. Nahmias, director of the university’s Alexander Grass Center for Bioengineering, is the fourth Israeli to be so honored.

He invented Future Meat, the process for growing meat in a growth medium that could reduce the need for slaughterhouses and which already has become a topic for conversation in the world of kashrut.

Nahmias, 43, also founded Tissue Dynamics, which has created a platform that mimics human biology to provide toxicity and efficacy screening services. The technology will enable thousands of laboratories to study fatty liver disease, viral hepatitis, drug toxicity and liver cancer at a much lower cost.