The fourth and final Azrieli Graduate Studies Forum of the academic year took place on Monday, May 11, 2026, at the Council for a Beautiful Israel in Tel Aviv. Graduate Studies Fellows came together, joined by Visiting PhD Fellow Carter Barnett, for a full day of presentations, conversation, and shared reflection on the year drawing to a close.
The day opened with greetings from Program Director Rochelle Avitan, followed by “Azrieli Let’s Roll (The Dice),” an interactive opening session designed by the forum’s steering committee, Aviva Eliyahu, Michal Hanouka, Moriah Omer-Attali, Tom Parnass, and Tal Yehezkely. The session invited Fellows to consider the role of chance, risk, and unexpected turns in research and academic life.
Six Fellows then presented their work across two sessions, covering a strikingly broad disciplinary range. Talks included research on the neuroscience of compulsive behaviour, the interpretability of artificial intelligence and how we might visualize the way AI “thinks,” a newly identified feature of the quantum world, multi-material 3D printing in mechanical engineering, and the psychology of self-perception. The session closed with Carter Barnett’s presentation on the history of hospitals in Israel from the medieval period to the present, drawing on his doctoral research in the history of medicine at Johns Hopkins University.
After a shared lunch, the day closed with “Postdoc Unplugged,” a session that brought together Azrieli Faculty Fellows and International Postdoctoral Fellows to speak candidly with Graduate Studies Fellows about the transition from doctoral studies to postdoctoral research. Participants split into three groups organized by broad disciplinary area, with natural sciences on one side and humanities and social sciences on the other, so that conversations could stay close to the realities of each field. The format reflected an important truth: the postdoctoral experience is very different from the PhD, and for the predominantly doctoral Graduate Studies Fellows in the room, some already knowing where they were headed and others still weighing options, direct and frank advice from those a step or two ahead carries a particular weight.
As the year’s closing forum, the day offered both a celebration of the Fellows’ work and a reminder of what makes the program distinctive: intellectual seriousness, generous exchange across disciplines, and a community willing to take chances together.
Stay tuned: a link to the six presentations will appear here soon.
