Dr. Frida Ben-Ami is a curator of Mollusks at the Steinhardt Museum, and a Senior Lecturer at the School of Zoology, Tel Aviv University. She completed her PhD in Evolution, Systematics and Ecology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, supervised by Prof. Joseph Heller. She went on to do postdoctoral studies with Prof. Dieter Ebert, in the Institute of Zoology, University of Basel, Switzerland. In her research, Frida addresses causes and consequences of host-parasite interactions focusing on the evolutionary ecology of natural freshwater systems. To this end, she studies two aquatic model systems: water fleas of the genus Daphnia and their microparasites, and freshwater snails and their parasitic trematodes. She believes in taking a multifaceted approach: by performing controlled laboratory experiments at the individual level; by simulating semi-natural environments, whereby populations of hosts and parasites interact in mesocosms; by carrying out fieldwork in natural populations; and by closely collaborating with theoreticians to generalize mechanisms uncovered in my systems to other disease systems.