After her PhD Addadi joined
Jeremy R. Knowles at
Harvard University. She started to work on crystal growth during her PhD, and, by chance, met Steve Weiner, who was working on
biomineralization. Together they investigated many biominerals, including demonstrating the matrix sheets of crystals in
nacre (mother of pearl). Addadi returned to the
Weizmann Institute of Science as an associate professor in 1988. She demonstrated that macromolecules in the shells of mollusks determine the polymorphism of aragonite and calcite. She went on to establish the role of
amorphous calcium carbonate in biomineralization. Addadi identified that mollusks build their shells using
hydrophobic silk gels,
aspartic acid, acid-rich proteins, and an amorphous precursor. Addadi is interested in how macromolecules nucleate oriented growth and how morphology changes through interactions with surfaces. This can help too understand how diseases such as
gout,
osteoarthritis, and
atherosclerosis form crystals in
body fluids. She was the first woman to win the
ETH Zurich prelog prize in 1989. She was appointed
dean of the faculty of chemistry in 2001. She demonstrated that in cell culture, crystals adopt a similar shape to the
atherosclerotic plaque that forms in cells, because they are formed from the same
cholesterol. The crystals adopt helical or tubular forms. Addadi used
stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy and
soft X-ray tomography to identify the cholesterol inside cells. == Awards and honours ==