Tal Ben-Horin is an assistant professor of shellfish pathology at the College of Veterinary Medicine, North Carolina State University. He received his PhD in 2013 from the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California Santa Barbara, where he worked on abalone fisheries impacted by a fatal bacterial disease. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Rutgers University Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences and then a USDA NIFA Agriculture Research fellowship at the University of Rhode Island and USDA Agricultural Research Service. He has conducted marine field research in the California Channel Islands, the Pacific Northwest, Baja California, Australia, and throughout the USA East Coast.
Tal is active in shellfish conservation and aquaculture research at the regional and national level. He chairs the board of the East Coast Shellfish Research Institute and serves a member of the interstate Shellfish Health Advisory Panel as well as the Black Abalone Recovery Team under the USA Endangered Species Act.