50 Notable alumni of
Weizmann Institute of Science
Updated:
Weizmann Institute of Science is 1354th in the world, 296th in Asia, and 10th in Israel by aggregated alumni prominence. Below is the list of 50 notable alumni from Weizmann Institute of Science sorted by their wiki pages popularity. The directory includes famous graduates and former students along with research and academic staff. 1 individual affiliated with Weizmann Institute of Science won Nobel Prizes in Chemistry.
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Ada Yonath
- Occupations
- scientistchemistcrystallographerresearcheruniversity teacher
- Biography
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Ada E. Yonath is an Israeli crystallographer and Nobel laureate in Chemistry, best known for her pioneering work on the structure of ribosomes. She is the current director of the Helen and Milton A. Kimmelman Center for Biomolecular Structure and Assembly of the Weizmann Institute of Science.
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Adi Shamir
- Occupations
- cryptologistcomputer scientistmathematician
- Biography
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Adi Shamir is an Israeli cryptographer and inventor. He is a co-inventor of the Rivest–Shamir–Adleman (RSA) algorithm (along with Ron Rivest and Len Adleman), a co-inventor of the Feige–Fiat–Shamir identification scheme (along with Uriel Feige and Amos Fiat), one of the inventors of differential cryptanalysis and has made numerous contributions to the fields of cryptography and computer science.
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Raphael Mechoulam
- Occupations
- physicianuniversity teacherchemist
- Biography
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Raphael Mechoulam was a Bulgarian-born Israeli organic chemist and a professor in the Department of Natural Materials at the School of Pharmacy in the Faculty of Medicine of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Mechoulam served as Rector of the university from 1979–1982. He was elected to the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 1994 and served as its scientific chair from 2007-2013. He was a recipient of the Israel Prize for Chemistry Research in 2000 and the Harvey Prize for 2019-2020.
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Amnon Shashua
- Occupations
- computer scientistartificial intelligence researcher
- Biography
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Amnon Shashua is an Israeli computer scientist, businessman and philanthropist. He is the Sachs Professor of Computer Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of the autonomous driving and driver-assistance technology company Mobileye, Co-founder of the artificial vision devices company OrCam, Founder and owner of ONE ZERO digital bank, and chairman of artificial intelligence company AI21 Labs.
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Yoram Yovell
- Years
- 1958-.. (age 67)
- Occupations
- university teacherpsychoanalystpsychiatristneuroscientist
- Biography
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Yoram Yovell is an Israeli psychoanalyst, psychiatrist and brain researcher. He is an Associate Professor of the Practice at the Department of Medical Neurobiology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His areas of research include the neurobiology of emotions and mechanisms of physical and mental pain.
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Arieh Warshel
- Occupations
- university teacherbiophysicistbiochemistchemist
- Biography
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Arieh Warshel is an Israeli-American biochemist and biophysicist. He is a pioneer in computational studies on functional properties of biological molecules, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and holds the Dana and David Dornsife Chair in Chemistry at the University of Southern California. He received the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, together with Michael Levitt and Martin Karplus for "the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems".
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Gabriele Veneziano
- Occupations
- physicistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Gabriele Veneziano is an Italian theoretical physicist widely considered the father of string theory. He has conducted most of his scientific activities at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, and held the Chair of Elementary Particles, Gravitation and Cosmology at the Collège de France in Paris from 2004 to 2013, until the age of retirement there.
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Mario Livio
- Occupations
- physicistastrophysicistpedagoguewriterastronomer
- Biography
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Mario Livio is an astrophysicist and an author of works that popularize science and mathematics. For 24 years (1991–2015) he was an astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates the Hubble Space Telescope. He has published more than 400 scientific articles on topics including cosmology, supernova explosions, black holes, extrasolar planets, and the emergence of life in the universe. His book on the irrational number phi, The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing Number (2002), won the Peano Prize and the International Pythagoras Prize for popular books on mathematics.
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Nathan Seiberg
- Occupations
- physicisttheoretical physicist
- Biography
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Nathan "Nati" Seiberg is an Israeli American theoretical physicist who works on quantum field theory and string theory. He is currently a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, United States.
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Amir Pnueli
- Occupations
- engineeruniversity teachercomputer scientistmathematicianpedagogue
- Biography
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Amir Pnueli was an Israeli computer scientist and the 1996 Turing Award recipient.
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Anders Levermann
- Enrolled in Weizmann Institute of Science
- 2000-2002 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy
- Occupations
- physicistuniversity teacherclimatologist
- Biography
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Anders Levermann is a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Columbia University. He is a Professor of the Dynamics of the Climate System at Institute for Physics and Astrophysics of the Potsdam University, Germany. He has been involved in the assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since 2004. Levermann advises political and economic stakeholders on the issue of climate change.
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Mordehai Milgrom
- Occupations
- university teacherastrophysicistastronomerphysicist
- Biography
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Mordehai "Moti" Milgrom is an Israeli physicist and professor in the department of Particle Physics and Astrophysics at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel.
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Doron Zeilberger
- Occupations
- computer scientistmathematician
- Biography
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Doron Zeilberger is an Israeli-American mathematician, known for his work in combinatorics.
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Moshe Vardi
- Enrolled in Weizmann Institute of Science
- In 1980 graduated with Master of Science in computer science
- Occupations
- university teachermathematiciancomputer scientistengineer
- Biography
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Moshe Ya'akov Vardi MAE ForMemRS is an Israeli theoretical computer scientist. He is the Karen Ostrum George Distinguished Service Professor in Computational Engineering at Rice University, United States. and a faculty advisor for the Ken Kennedy Institute. His interests focus on applications of logic to computer science, including database theory, finite model theory, knowledge of multi-agent systems, computer-aided verification and reasoning, and teaching logic across the curriculum. He is an expert in model checking, constraint satisfaction and database theory, common knowledge (logic), and theoretical computer science.
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Uri Alon
- Enrolled in Weizmann Institute of Science
- Graduated with Doctor of Philosophy
- Occupations
- molecular biologistuniversity teacherordinary professorbiophysicistbiologist
- Biography
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Uri Alon is a Professor and Systems Biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science. His highly cited research investigates gene expression, network motifs and the design principles of biological networks in Escherichia coli and other organisms using both computational biology and traditional experimental wet laboratory techniques.
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Eli Biham
- Occupations
- engineeruniversity teachercomputer scientistmathematiciancryptologist
- Biography
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Eli Biham is an Israeli cryptographer and cryptanalyst who is a professor at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology Computer Science department. From 2008 to 2013, Biham was the dean of the Technion Computer Science department, after serving for two years as chief of CS graduate school. Biham invented (publicly) differential cryptanalysis, for which he received his Ph.D., while working under Adi Shamir. It had been invented before by a team at IBM during their Data Encryption Standard work; the National Security Agency told IBM to keep the discovery secret.
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Dorit Aharonov
- Occupations
- university teachercomputer scientistengineerphysicist
- Biography
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Dorit Aharonov is an Israeli computer scientist specializing in quantum computing.
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Dana Moshkovitz
- Occupations
- computer scientist
- Biography
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Dana Moshkovitz Aaronson is an Israeli theoretical computer scientist whose research topics include approximation algorithms and probabilistically checkable proofs. She is an associate professor of computer science at the University of Texas at Austin.
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Yossi Matias
- Years
- 1958-.. (age 67)
- Occupations
- computer scientist
- Biography
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Yossi Matias is an Israeli-American computer scientist, entrepreneur and Google executive. Matias is Vice President, Engineering & Research at Google, and the founding managing director of Google's Center in Israel. He is on the leadership team of Google's Research, the global exec lead overseeing Google’s Health AI, Crisis Response and Climate AI efforts, and leads efforts in Conversational AI. For over a decade he was on the leadership team of Google’s Search, building and leading efforts including Google Trends, Google Autocomplete, Search Console, and Search experiences in weather, sports, dictionaries and more. In 2024 Matias move to Silicon Valley to head Google Research, the company’s global research activity.
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Lev Vaidman
- Occupations
- physicistresearcher
- Biography
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Lev Vaidman is a Russian-Israeli physicist and Professor at Tel Aviv University, Israel. He is noted for his theoretical work in the area of fundamentals of quantum mechanics, which includes quantum teleportation, the Elitzur–Vaidman bomb tester, and the weak values. He was a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of The American Journal of Physics from 2007 to 2009. In 2010, the Elitzur–Vaidman bomb tester was chosen as one of the "Seven Wonders of the Quantum World" by New Scientist Magazine.
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Daniel Amit
- Occupations
- physicistscientist
- Biography
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Daniel J. Amit was an Israeli physicist and pacifist, who was one of the pioneers in the field of computational neuroscience. Amit, Hanoch Gutfreund and Haim Sompolinsky, in a set of papers referred to as the ASG papers, were the first to demonstrate the utility of statistical mechanics in neural network research and helped establish theoretical and computational neuroscience as a novel approach that brings into brain research unique powerful sets of concepts, models, and standards of rigour.
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Yael Tauman Kalai
- Born in
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Israel - Occupations
- computer scientistcryptographer
- Biography
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Yael Tauman Kalai is a cryptographer and theoretical computer scientist and is the Ellen Swallow Richards Professor at MIT in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab. Prior to that, she worked as a Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research New England.
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Michal Schwartz
- Occupations
- immunologistphysicianneuroscientistneuroimmunologistresearcher
- Biography
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Michal Schwartz is a professor of neuroimmunology at the Weizmann Institute of Science. She is active in the field of neurodegenerative diseases, particularly utilizing the immune system to help the brain fight terminal neurodegenerative brain diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease and dementia.
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Joanna Aizenberg
- Years
- 1960-.. (age 65)
- Occupations
- researcherchemist
- Biography
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Joanna Aizenberg is a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University. She is the Amy Smith Berylson Professor of Materials Science at Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the co-director of the Kavli Institute for Bionano Science and Technology and a core faculty member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. She is a prominent figure in the field of biologically inspired materials science, having authored 90 publications and holding 25 patents.
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Moshe Bar
- Years
- 1964-.. (age 61)
- Occupations
- neuroscientistresearcher
- Biography
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Moshe Bar is an Israeli cognitive neuroscientist. He is a professor at Bar-Ilan University. He was previously head of the Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center at Bar-Ilan University and before that director of the Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.
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Shalheveth Freier
- Occupations
- Aliyah Bet activistphysicist
- Biography
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Shalhevet Freier was an Israeli physicist and administrator.
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Hermona Soreq
- Occupations
- researcherbiochemistneuroscientist
- Biography
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Hermona Soreq is an Israeli professor of Molecular Neuroscience at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Best known for her work on the signaling of acetylcholine and its relevance in stress responses and neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.
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Yehuda Lindell
- Occupations
- cryptographer
- Biography
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Yehuda Lindell is an Israeli professor in the Department of Computer Science at Bar-Ilan University where he conducts research on cryptography with a focus on the theory of secure computation and its application in practice. Lindell currently leads the cryptography team at Coinbase.
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Zafra M. Lerman
- Enrolled in Weizmann Institute of Science
- In 1969 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy in chemistry
- Occupations
- chemist
- Biography
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Zafra M. Lerman is an American chemist, educator, and humanitarian. She is the President of the Malta Conferences Foundation, which aims to promote peace by bringing together scientists from otherwise hostile countries to discuss science and foster international scientific and technical collaboration. From 1986 to 2010, she chaired the American Chemical Society's Subcommittee on Scientific Freedom and Human Rights. She has been successful in preventing executions, releasing prisoners of conscience from jail and bringing dissidents to freedom. She is the recipient of many awards for education and science diplomacy, including the 1999 Presidential Award from U.S. President Clinton, the 2005 Nyholm Prize for Education from the Royal Society of Chemistry, the 2015 Science Diplomacy Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the 2016 Andrei Sakharov Award for human rights from the American Physical Society (APS), the 2016 United Nations NOVUS Award for the 16th Sustainable Development Goal: Peace and Justice, and the 2017 International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry Distinguished Women in Chemistry or Chemical Engineering Award.
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Karen Avraham
- Enrolled in Weizmann Institute of Science
- 1984-1990 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy
- Occupations
- deanFaculty of Medicinegeneticist
- Biography
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Karen B. Avraham is an Israeli-American human geneticist and the first female Dean of the Tel Aviv University's Faculty of Medicine. Born in Canada in 1962, Avraham moved to the US at a young age. Her research focuses on the discovery and characterization of genes responsible for hereditary hearing loss.
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Ron Milo
- Enrolled in Weizmann Institute of Science
- Graduated with Doctor of Philosophy
- Occupations
- biologistuniversity teacherbiochemist
- Biography
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Ron Milo is a Professor of Systems Biology at the Weizmann Institute of Science. He is Weizmann Dean of Education, the chairperson of the Israel society of ecology and environmental sciences and the director of the Institute for environmental sustainability at Weizmann. Formerly he was the chairperson of the Israel young academy.
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Asya Rolls
- Enrolled in Weizmann Institute of Science
- 2002-2007 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy
- Occupations
- researcher
- Biography
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Asya Rolls is an Israeli psychoneuroimmunologist and International Howard Hughes Medical Institute- Wellcome trust reseracher (2018-2023). She is a Professor at the Faculty of Life Scielces in Tel Aviv University. Until 2024, she was a Professor at the Rappaport medical school at the Israel Institute of Technology. Rolls leads a lab that explores how the nervous system affects immune responses and thus physical health. Her recent work has highlighted how the brain's reward system is implicated in the placebo response and how brain-immune interactions can be harnessed to find and destroy tumors.
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Achi Brandt
- Occupations
- mathematicianuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Achiezer Brandt is an Israeli mathematician, noted for his pioneering contributions to multigrid methods.
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Amnon Albeck
- Occupations
- university teacherchemist
- Biography
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Amnon Albeck is an organic and bioorganic chemist.
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Ohad Birk
- Enrolled in Weizmann Institute of Science
- 1991-1995 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy
- Studied in 1995
- Occupations
- scientist
- Biography
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Ohad Birk a physician-scientist, is a professor of human genetics, converging basic scientific research with effective clinical translational applications. Birk's research lab deciphered the molecular basis and mechanism of more than 30 human diseases, including some of the most prevalent severe hereditary diseases in Arabs and in Jews, as well as three syndromes named after Birk. He also implemented his scientific findings in massive carrier testing programs, conducive to 30% reduction in infant mortality rate in the Bedouin community, as well as near-eradication of two of the most common severe hereditary diseases in Sephardic Jews. Birk heads the clinical Genetics Institute at Soroka Medical Center and the Morris Kahn Laboratory of Human Genetics as well as Israel's National Research Center for Orphan / Rare Diseases at Ben Gurion University, and served as director of Israel's National Institute of Biotechnology in the Negev (NIBN) between 2016 and 2017.
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Kobbi Nissim
- Enrolled in Weizmann Institute of Science
- 1994-1996 graduated with Master of Science
- 1996-2001 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy
- Occupations
- cryptographercomputer scientistresearcher
- Biography
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Kobbi Nissim is a computer scientist at Georgetown University, where he is the McDevitt Chair of Computer Science. His areas of research include cryptography and data privacy. He is known for the introduction of differential privacy.
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Kinneret Keren
- Occupations
- physicist
- Biography
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Kinneret Keren is an Israeli biophysicist and nanotechnologist whose research has involved the biology-based self-assembly of molecular electronics using DNA as a template, as well as the movement of biological cells, pattern formation, and morphogenesis in biology and synthetic biology. She is a faculty member in the Department of Physics at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.
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Robert H. Singer
- Enrolled in Weizmann Institute of Science
- 1973-1974 graduated with postdoctoral researcher
- Occupations
- biologist
- Biography
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Dr. Robert H. Singer received an undergraduate degree in physical chemistry from Oberlin College, and a PhD in developmental biology from Brandeis University. He did postdoctoral work in molecular biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. Oberlin College granted Singer an Honorary Doctor of Science in 2016. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem granted Singer an Honorary Doctorate in 2018.
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Doron Lancet
- Years
- 1948-.. (age 77)
- Occupations
- geneticistimmunologist
- Biography
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Doron Lancet is an Israeli human geneticist. He is the Ralph D. and Lois R. Silver Professor of Human Genomics and head of the Crown Human Genome Center at the Weizmann Institute of Science. He is known for researching the genetic basis of olfaction, for developing the human genetics database GeneCards, and for his work on Abiogenesis and the development of the Gard model.
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Miron Livny
- Years
- 1950-.. (age 75)
- Occupations
- computer scientist
- Biography
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Miron Livny is a senior researcher and professor specializing in distributed computing at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Livny has been a professor of computer science at Wisconsin since 1983, where he leads the HTCondor high-throughput computing system project. Miron is also a principal investigator and currently the facility coordinator for the Open Science Grid project, Director of the Center for High Throughput computing, CTO of Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, and Director of Core Computational Technology of the Morgridge Institute for Research.
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Zvi Wiener
- Occupations
- economist
- Biography
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Zvi Wiener is a Professor of Finance and the former dean of the Hebrew University Business School Business administration at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
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Yitzhak Mastai
- Occupations
- university teacherchemist
- Biography
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Yitzhak Mastai is a chemistry professor at Bar Ilan University, specializing in chirality at the nanoscale and in nanotechnology.
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Varda Rotter
- Occupations
- biologistmolecular biologist
- Biography
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Varda Rotter is a German-born-Israeli cancer researcher.
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Lia Addadi
- Occupations
- biochemist
- Biography
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Lia Addadi is a professor of structural biology at the Weizmann Institute of Science. She works on crystallization in biology, including biomineralization, interactions with cells, and crystallization in cell membranes. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 2017 for “distinguished and continuing achievements in original research”, and the American Philosophical Society (2020).
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Zvi HaCohen
- Occupations
- researcherchemist
- Biography
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Prof. Zvi HaCohen is an Israeli scientist who, since August 2010, has served as Rector of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU).
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Ron Folman
- Enrolled in Weizmann Institute of Science
- 1990-1992 graduated with Master of Science
- 1993-1998 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy
- Occupations
- physicistresearcher
- Biography
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Ron Folman (Hebrew: רון פולמן; (Born Feb 16th, 1963), is an Israeli quantum physicist and social activist. He works at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) where he heads the Atom Chip group.
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Oded Béjà
- Years
- 1964-.. (age 61)
- Enrolled in Weizmann Institute of Science
- In 1993 graduated with Master of Science
- In 1998 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy
- Occupations
- microbiologist
- Biography
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Oded Béjà is a professor in the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, in the field of marine microbiology and metagenomics.
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Yuval Golan
- Enrolled in Weizmann Institute of Science
- 1988-1995 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy
- Occupations
- university teachermaterials scientist
- Biography
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Yuval Golan is an Israeli materials scientist at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU). Golan, a professor of materials engineering, studies materials at the nanoscale level and focuses on their synthesis, characterization and applications. Golan is the Director of the Ilse Katz Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology, and chairman of the synchrotron committee of the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
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Shlomo Margel
- Occupations
- university teacherchemist
- Biography
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Shlomo Margel is a Professor of Chemistry at Bar Ilan University specializing in polymers, biopolymers, functional thin films, encapsulation, surface chemistry, nanotechnology, nanobiotechnology and agro-nanotechnology.
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Hagit Eldar-Finkelman
- Born in
- Israel
- Enrolled in Weizmann Institute of Science
- In 1986 graduated with Master of Science
- In 1993 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy
- Occupations
- researcher
- Biography
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Hagit Eldar-Finkelman is an Israeli scientist and a principal investigator of an active research laboratory at the Sackler School of Medicine at Tel Aviv University. Eldar-Finkelman’s research is focused on the signal transduction field and drug development targeting protein kinases. She is well known for her pioneering work on the functions of GSK-3 and its contribution to diabetes and other pathogenies, including depressive behavior, Alzheimer’s diseases, and Huntington’s diseases. Novel findings also include the unique evolution of GSK-3 isozymes. Eldar-Finkelman is a leading figure in developing novel substrate competitive inhibitors (SCIs) for GSK-3 with significant benefits as drug candidates.
