Stefano Baiguera

Dr. Stefano Baiguera is an Azrieli International Postdoctoral Fellow in the Physics Department at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

His research, under the supervision of Dr. Shira Chapman, deals with the interplay between quantum information and black holes.

The holographic principle is a theoretical duality relating quantum mechanical phenomena to the physics of gravitational systems. This surprising link connects the theoretical properties of astronomical objects, like black holes, to the optimization of quantum computers. In particular, the interior of a black hole can be related to computational complexity, which is the difficulty of implementing a certain operation. Stefano’s research also focuses on the study of nonrelativistic theories which lead to a controlled framework for analyzing quantum systems and their dual gravitational description.

Stefano was born in Italy and studied for his BSc and MSc in physics at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Brescia. He completed his PhD in physics at the University of Milano- Bicocca under the supervision of Prof. Silvia Penati and then continued to a postdoctoral position at the Niels Bohr Institute (NBI) in Copenhagen under the supervision of Prof. Troels Harmark and Prof. Niels Obers. Besides research, Stefano enjoys playing board games, trading card games, and playing chess and football with friends.

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Shlomit Bechar

Dr. Shlomit Bechar is a new faculty member in the School of Archaeology and Maritime Cultures at the University of Haifa. Shlomit is an archaeologist who specializes in the study of material culture in general and the analysis of ceramic assemblages in particular. She has been excavating at the UNESCO World Heritage site of Tel Hazor since 2007, which she also co-directed (2016–2021). Starting in 2023, she will lead a new research project in the lower city of Hazor.

Shlomit’s research focuses on questions of social differentiation, cultural interconnections, and economic changes and challenges, and on identifying methods of resilience to climate change.

She explores these research questions through a network of local and international collaborations using new scientific methods. As an archaeologist, her goal is to integrate these issues within broader historical research questions. During her Azrieli fellowship, she will investigate how human utilization of wetlands contributed to the rise of urbanization, using environmental- archaeological methods of analysis, such as analysis of geological cores, stable isotopes, flora and fauna, petrography, and architecture and ceramics. This will be done with a multidisciplinary team of scholars from Israel and abroad.

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Shiri Ron

Shiri Ron is a PhD student in the Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at the Weizmann Institute of Science under the supervision of Prof. Shahar Dobzinski.

She is interested in algorithmic mechanism design, which is a subfield at the intersection of computer science and microeconomic theory.

In her work, she aims to design algorithms for settings in which people may benefit by providing the algorithm with false or biased information. Examples of such settings are the assignment of medical students to internships and government auctions for allocating public goods, such as radio spectrum, electricity, and housing. Her interest in this subject also led her to take part in the implementation of the 5G spectrum auction held by the Israeli Ministry of Communications.

Shiri was born in Tel Aviv, where she currently lives with her partner. She received her BSc in computer science and psychology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and her MSc in computer science from the Weizmann Institute, also under the supervision of Prof. Dobzinski. Before and during her undergraduate studies she volunteered at Sahar, where she provided hotline support for people undergoing emotional distress. In her spare time, Shiri enjoys yoga, reading, and playing beach volleyball.

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Shir Genzer

Shir Genzer is a PhD student in the Psychology Department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem under the supervision of Azrieli Early Career Faculty Alum Prof. Anat Perry.

Her research focuses on the mechanisms that enable us to understand others’ emotions and feelings, specifically, how different information channels (visual, auditory, and semantic) contribute to cognitive and affective empathy.

She combines behavioural, physiological, and EEG methods as well as advanced statistical methods (e.g., mixed model analysis, Bayesian modelling analysis) to analyze the empathy abilities of both neurotypical people, people with clinical conditions such as autism and ADHD, and stroke patients. Shir hopes to shed light not only on deficits but also on conditions that enhance the emotion recognition abilities of individuals from these clinical populations. By shifting the focus from difficulties to strengths, she hopes to facilitate the development of better intervention approaches and improve the daily social functioning of neurodiverse individuals.

Shir was born and raised in Bet Lehem Haglilit with three sisters: an identical twin and two younger sisters who are also identical twins. She received her BSc in psychobiology and the Amirim Natural Sciences Program from the Hebrew University, where she was an active member of the student union, working to improve the rights of students. In her free time, Shir volunteers with autistic children and enjoys dancing, reading, and spending time with her family and friends

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Shahar Dubiner

Shahar is a PhD student in the School of Zoology at Tel Aviv University under the supervision of Dr. Eran Levin and Prof. Shai Meiri.

Shahar studies the ecophysiology of reptiles and the drivers for its variation across time and space.

His research interests revolve around the meeting points between thermal biology, metabolism, diet, biological rhythms, biogeography, and conservation and spans a wide range of scales and methods from the molecular through the organismal to the macro-ecological. By studying reptiles’ diverse solutions to survive cold, heat, aridity, food shortage – and their inherent changes – Shahar hopes to expand our knowledge of how life can adapt to its environment.

Shahar grew up in Kibbutz Yahad in the Lower Galilee. He received his BSc in biology from Tel Aviv University, continuing immediately on the direct PhD track. He loves every kind of living organism – and even some of the dead ones. In his (sadly) limited free time, Shahar enjoys good books, music, mangoes, karate, and hiking in nature. His favourite punctuation mark is the left round bracket.

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Shachar Fraenkel

Shachar Fraenkel is a PhD student in the Raymond and Beverly Sackler School of Physics and Astronomy at Tel Aviv University under the supervision of Prof. Moshe Goldstein.

Shachar research lies at the intersection between quantum information theory and quantum condensed matter theory, as he employs mathematical tools developed under the umbrella of the former to address fundamental problems within the latter.

Condensed matter theory deals with many-body systems, i.e., systems comprised of many microscopic particles that produce complex behaviours through their intercorrelations. In this context, Shachar mainly studies the entanglement properties of quantum many-body systems. Entanglement is a type of correlation between particles that is unique to quantum systems and defies classical intuition, providing a universal framework for the study of collective phenomena in such systems. Shachar analyzes entanglement in canonical theoretical models, hoping to elucidate its connection to foundational questions in quantum many-body physics, related to phase transitions, symmetries, and many-body systems out of equilibrium.

Shachar was born and raised in Haifa and currently lives in Tel Aviv. He received his BSc in mathematics and physics from Tel Aviv University. Alongside his research, Shachar teaches undergraduate physics courses at the university. He also previously taught middle- schoolers preparing to compete in the Physics Olympiad and worked as a personal tutor in Tel Aviv University’s support centre for students with learning disabilities. In his free time, Shachar enjoys photography, plays tennis, and has a deep interest in cinema, literature, history, and classical music.

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Serafima (Sima) Dubnov

Serafima (Sima) Dubnov is a PhD student in the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem under the collaborative supervision of Prof. Hermona Soreq and Azrieli Early Career Faculty Fellow Dr. Mor Nitzan.

Serafima research combines advanced computational and molecular tools to investigate RNA regulation in the human brain at the level of single cells and cell types.

RNA research has an invaluable clinical potential, offering an opportunity to develop methods for both diagnostics and therapeutics. Sima is constructing a unique short RNA-Seq dataset of neurons and microglia extracted from live human brain samples in an attempt to identify cell type specific regulation by microRNAs and tRNA fragments. She is also developing a novel RNA-Seq data analysis approach based on information theory and hopes that her research will contribute to the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.

Sima was born and raised in Moscow. She made aliyah after completing one year of a BSc in linguistics at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. After spending a year learning Hebrew, she started a BSc in psychobiology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and subsequently continued on the direct PhD track in neuroscience. In addition to her research, Sima also works as a teaching assistant at the Hebrew University and volunteers as a summer camp tutor in ALUT, the National Israeli Society for Children and Adults with Autism. Since the outbreak of the war between Russia and Ukraine, Sima has been helping new immigrants from both countries integrate into Israel. In her free time, she enjoys travelling, especially visiting her family in Moscow.

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Sarah Yona Zweig

Sarah Yona Zweig is a PhD student in the Department of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem under the guidance of Dr. Joseph Witztum and Dr. Naphtali Meshel.

Her research focuses on the Moses episode in Sūrat al-Kahf 18:60–82 and its literary background in Late Antiquity.

Sarah traces the narrative predecessors of Moses’ journey to sources as diverse as the Gilgamesh Epos, Apocalyptic Literature, and the Sayings of the Desert Fathers. By reading the classic Islamic commentaries as polytexts, she demonstrates their interplay with the many archives of Late Antiquity. Her research thus portrays the traditional exegetes as sensitive readers with their own modes of critical thought and philological practices. Sarah believes that motifs are instruments of transformation and that the world is comprised of stories and not of atoms.

Sarah grew up in Germany where she was a horse acrobat before making aliya to Israel. She obtained her BA in Greek philosophy and MA in comparative religion at the Hebrew University and also studied at both the Sorbonne in Paris and the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. Driven by a strong sense of social justice and a desire to explore visual parallels of emotional states, Sarah worked as a filmmaker in cinema and journalism for over a decade. She has lived, volunteered, and reported from India, China, Mongolia, Russia, the Syrian border, refugee camps in Germany, Israel and the Palestinian territories, and, most recently, the Ukrainian border. She was a fellow in the residence program at the Doha Institute for Advanced Studies in Doha, Qatar and a research fellow at the India International Centre in New Delhi. In her free time, Sarah likes to stand on her hands, play the oud disharmoniously, make furniture out of discarded wood, and explore hidden places.

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Sarah Libanore

Dr. Sarah Libanore is an Azrieli International Postdoctoral Fellow in the Physics Department at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Together with her supervisor, Azrieli alum Dr. Ely Kovetz, Sarah is investigating the structure and content of the universe and how it has changed over time, by studying the properties of the astrophysical sources and their distribution in time and space.

In her work, Sarah deals with two different kinds of sources: the gravitational waves, produced when two massive and compact objects, such as black holes, collide; and emissions of hot gas in the early universe. Exploiting the synergies between these techniques can provide us with a new and invaluable tool for studying astrophysics and cosmology and understanding the universe we live in.

Sarah was born in a small city in the north of Italy. She pursued her BA, MA, and PhD degrees at the University of Padova. Her PhD research, under the supervision of Prof. Michele Liguori and Prof. Alvise Raccanelli, focused on the clustering of gravitational wave sources to understand cosmology. In 2022, under the auspices of the PhD Sandwich Program of the Israeli Council of Higher Education and with the support of Fondazione Aldo Gini, Sarah spent six months in Israel collaborating with Dr. Ely Kovetz. Sarah loves to talk about her research and thus also works as a science communicator, mainly with children. She is very curious and loves to travel, take photos, and meet new people from different cultures.

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Ronnie Agassi Cohen

Ronnie Agassi Cohen is a PhD student in the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem under the supervision of Dr. Julia Rubanovich and Prof. Eyal Ginio.

Ronnie studies the history of the Ottoman Empire with a focus on the influence of Persian culture and literature on the development of Ottoman identity.

By analyzing historical works written in the Ottoman Empire in Persian and Turkish, her research identifies the intertextual connections between these texts and other prominent Persian literary works. She thus traces the links between historical writing in Persian and the development of Ottoman imperial identity during the second half of the fifteenth century. Ronnie hopes to offer a broader view of the cultural and intellectual changes following the transformation of the Ottoman state into an empire and present a unique perspective on cultural connections and identity formation in the pre-modern Middle East.

Ronnie grew up in Ra’anana and currently lives with her husband and child in Kfar Saba. She received her BA and MA in Middle Eastern and African history from Tel Aviv University. She is a member of the research group Past and Past Perfect at the Mandel Scholion Research Center at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In addition to her research, in the past few years she has been part of “Great History in a Nutshell,” a voluntary project promoting public history education via social media. In her free time, she enjoys listening to podcasts and audiobooks, watching movies, and spending time with her family.

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