Avi Gluck

Avi Gluck is a PhD student in the Department of Molecular Genetics at the Weizmann Institute of Science under the supervision of Prof. Noam Stern-Ginossar.

His research focuses on the mechanisms employed by SARS-CoV-2 to shut off host protein synthesis and subvert the host cell toward successful viral production.

Avi uses a combination of molecular and high-throughput techniques to probe the mechanism and host factors involved in host mRNA decay induced by the coronavirus. Understanding the specifics of this viral strategy will provide insight into potential treatments, against not only COVID-19 but also potential future novel coronaviruses.

Avi was born in Chicago and immigrated to Israel at the age of 19. He currently lives in Kiryat Gat with his wife and three children. After serving in the IDF as a lone soldier, he obtained a BSc in biochemistry and food science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an MSc at the Weizmann Institute of Science, where he studied host shutoff in coronaviruses. During his undergraduate studies, Avi volunteered at the Lone Soldier Center in Memory of Michael Levin helping fellow lone soldiers. In his free time, Avi enjoys hiking, running, listening to audiobooks, and spending time with his family.

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Ariel Tennenhouse

Ariel Tennenhouse is a PhD student in the Lab of Protein Design at the Department of Biomolecular Sciences of the Weizmann Institute of Science under the supervision of Prof. Sarel-Jacob Fleishman.

Ariel studies how antibody sequence and structure determine function and is developing a combination of computational and experimental methods to address this fundamental question.

He employs cutting-edge atomistic protein design and machine-learning methods to design a library of billions of human antibodies and uses high- throughput experimental screening to evaluate their function and stability. Ariel’s work, which is groundbreaking in terms of the massive scale of its computational protein design, aims to shed light on the biophysical underpinnings of processes that are critical for the efficacy of antibodies and to eventually create an ideal library of antibodies for drug discovery. He also hopes to provide tools to accelerate development and lower the cost of life-saving antibody therapeutics.

Ariel was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. He obtained his BSc in chemical biology at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition to his studies, Ariel was deeply involved with the campus Hillel and an organization called Camp Kesem which organizes a free, week-long summer camp for children whose parents have cancer, for which students fundraise throughout the year. He joined the Weizmann Institute in 2019 to study for his MSc in chemistry and now lives in Tel Aviv. In his free time, Ariel enjoys playing Frisbee, reading, seeing friends, and watching TV.

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Anna Pshenichny-Mamo

Anna Pshenichny-Mamo is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Education in Science and Technology at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology under the supervision of Prof. Dina Tsybulsky.

Anna’s research centres on the integration of the nature of science in natural history museums, which remains a relatively unexplored area despite its potential impact on visitors’ understanding of the different aspects of science.

Her research employs various methodologies, such as analyzing exhibitions, gathering data from museum scientists, curators, and educational teams, and examining guided tours in natural history museums worldwide. Her goal is to formulate conceptual approaches that enhance the educational value of natural history museums for integrating the nature of science. Based on her research findings, Anna aims to provide policy recommendations for exhibitions and guided tours, highlighting opportunities to make implicit references to the nature of science more explicit, thereby enriching visitors’ perspectives and knowledge.

Anna was born in Kherson, Ukraine, and immigrated to Israel at the age of seven with her parents. They moved to Kiryat Ata, where she currently lives with her husband and their two children. Anna obtained a BSc in biology and a MSc in education in science and technology at the Technion. Before starting her doctoral studies, Anna worked as a biology and science teacher, finding immense joy in educating and guiding her students. Beyond her professional pursuits, she is active in the Technion Student Union and in the parents’ committee at her children’s school. In her free time, Anna enjoys spending time with her family and engaging in outdoor adventures.

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Anat Ovadia-Rosner

Anat Ovadia-Rosner is a PhD student in the Zvi Meitar Center for Advanced Legal Studies of the Buchmann Faculty of Law at Tel Aviv University under the supervision of Prof. Yishai Blank.

Anat’s dissertation explores the historical development of legal rules and institutions governing minority and majority relations in Israeli public law.

Using original archival research and several case studies, she is examining the origins of the concepts of “minorities” and “majorities” and their transformation since the early years of Israeli statehood: for example, which groups Israeli decision-makers envisioned as “minorities” and “majorities” while formulating legal rules in different times, what rationales and justifications underpinned these mechanisms, and how the legal mechanisms constructed various perceptions concerning equality, hierarchy, and social relations? By analyzing this process, her research explores whether it is time to reconsider the way we think about minority and majority relations and whether a new approach will yield revised and improved legal arrangements.

Anat obtained a BA in the Honors Program in Humanities and Arts (magna cum laude), an LLB in law (magna cum laude) and an MA in history (summa cum laude) from Tel Aviv University. She decided to pursue her law studies after working at the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, an NGO defending the rights of migrants, asylum seekers, and trafficking victims. Prior to embarking on her PhD, Anat completed her legal internship at the Israeli Supreme Court where she clerked for Justice Daphne Barak-Erez. In her free time, she enjoys reading, swimming, and practicing yoga.

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Ami Asyag

Ami Asyag is a PhD student in the Institute of Archaeology’s Department of Ancient Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He studies Assyriology under the supervision of Prof. Uri Gabbay, and his research focuses on the Sumerian Emesal prayers from the ancient Mesopotamian city of Uruk.

Ami examines continuity and change in the liturgy of Uruk in ancient Mesopotamia in the second and first millennium BCE.

Uruk played a central role in Mesopotamian liturgy due to the prayers to its city goddess, Inana, which spread throughout the region to many other cities. These prayers were written in the cuneiform script on clay tablets, preserving a tradition spanning roughly 2,000 years of transmission. Ami aims to explore how the local and common features of the prayers interact and affect each other. His research looks to shed light on all prayers from Uruk while also reaching more general conclusions on the evolution of local religious practices over time.

Ami grew up in a large family of eight siblings in a small village in northern Israel. He currently lives with his wife and daughter in Jerusalem. He obtained his BA in general history (summa cum laude) at the Open University of Israel and his MA in Assyriology (magna cum laude) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He wrote his thesis on Sumerian Emesal prayers from the ancient city of Ĝirsu (modern-day Telloh, Iraq). Ami is a member of the ERC-funded research project Ancient Mesopotamian Priestly Scholasticism in the First Millennium BCE under the guidance of Prof. Uri Gabbay. In his free time, he enjoys reading, cooking, and spending time with his family.

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Alon Inbar

Alon Inbar is a PhD student in the Department of Condensed Matter Physics at the Weizmann Institute of Science under the supervision of Prof. Shahal Ilani. His research focuses on the electrical properties of twisted two dimensional materials.

Alon developed a new type of microscope, the Quantum Twisting Microscope, enabling the observation of exotic quantum behaviour of electrons in a unique way.

By employing this technique, Alon hopes to discover new types of material phases and advance our understanding of the nature of interactions in these physical systems. He believes that breakthroughs in this field will contribute substantially to the technologies of the future – from computer chips to smart sensors.

Alon grew up in Yehud and currently lives with his wife in Tel Aviv. He received a double BSc from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology: one in material science and engineering, and one in physics. Over the years, Alon has spent many hours volunteering as a counsellor in both the Israeli Scouts and Jewish summer camps in North America. This spirit of pursuing active leadership roles and contributing to mentorship and training programs was also embodied in Alon’s military service in a special intelligence unit. In his spare time, Alon enjoys rock climbing, playing tennis, and surfing.

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Yael Bitterman

Dr. Yael Bitterman is a new faculty member in the Department of Medical Neurobiology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research focuses on developing analytical and conceptual frameworks for inferring the function of brain circuits from large-scale neuronal and behavioural data. Leveraging the current unprecedented capabilities to monitor and manipulate the activity of many neurons, novel computational tools promise to enhance our capacity to characterize and interpret complex neuronal dynamics in relation to cognition, action, and sensation.

Yael studies the distributed neuronal code of adaptive behaviour and its evolution in both healthy conditions (e.g., learning) and maladaptive and pathological conditions (e.g., compulsion).

Yael completed her PhD in computational neuroscience in the lab of Prof. Israel Nelken at the Hebrew University. She developed pragmatic methods based on minimalistic assumptions for detecting regularities in the evolution of natural sounds to study the neuronal processing of naturalistic sounds in the auditory cortex of humans and rodents. For her postdoctorate, she joined the lab of Prof. Andreas Lüthi at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel, Switzerland. There she established approaches for extracting structures in high dimensional neuronal dynamics and relating them to local network’s role in learning, action selection, and the regulation of persistent states that underlie complex behaviour. Upon returning to the Hebrew University, Yael, a mother of three daughters, feels fortunate to join an academic community that advocates for scientific progress alongside truth, diversity, freedom, equality, and social cohesion.

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Reut Naim

Dr. Reut Naim is a new faculty member in the School of Psychological Sciences at Tel Aviv University. In her work, she uses clinical neuroscience and naturalistic research methods to study deep phenotyping of externalizing problems and disruptive behaviours while advancing mechanism-informed treatments to reduce these symptoms and distress in youth.

Reut’s research focuses on leveraging technology to investigate mechanisms of risk for externalizing psychopathology and to develop, evaluate, and implement interventions for large-scale dissemination to improve public health.

As an Azrieli Fellow, Reut will investigate the dynamics between inhibitory control, physiological arousal, and aggressive behaviours as they occur in the real world. Her aim is to explore temporal patterns and predict the likelihood of aggressive behaviour manifestation in the context of increased arousal and impaired inhibition.

Reut is a researcher and a certified clinical psychologist. She received her BA and MA from the School of Psychological Sciences at Tel Aviv University (summa cum laude), where she also earned her PhD in clinical psychology in the lab of anxiety and trauma. She completed a clinical psychology internship at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center’s psychiatric clinic. Reut received an intramural research fellowship award from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), where she completed her postdoctoral research in the Neuroscience and Novel Therapeutics Unit, studying mood dysregulation in youth. She lives in Herzliya with her partner, Noam, and their three children and enjoys hiking, going to concerts, practicing yoga, and spending time with friends and family.

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Or Litany

Dr. Or Litany is a new faculty member in the Department of Computer Science at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.

Specializing in artificial intelligence (AI) for computer vision, Or’s work emphasizes the generation, reconstruction, and semantic interpretation of what he terms 4D digital environments, namely, the three spatial dimensions plus time.

As an Azrieli Fellow, Or will push the boundaries of leveraging internet-scale video data in order to analyze and synthesize dynamic 3D objects and scenes. By incorporating the rich spatio-temporal structures present in videos, Or intends to advance the domain of 3D vision. Given the exponential growth in video content, his research posits that utilizing videos for 3D tasks could overcome the complexities of capturing 3D data at scale using specialized equipment. The practical applications of this research are manifold, including detecting and tracking objects of any category in images and videos, recovering the geometric structure of scenes, and generating and editing visual content from partial observations for immersive interaction.

Or received his BSc in physics and mathematics from the Hebrew University under the auspices of the IDF Talpiot program. He subsequently completed his Masters and PhD at Tel Aviv University under the supervision of Prof. Alex Bronstein. He conducted postdoctoral research at Stanford University and Meta AI Research under the guidance of Prof. Leonidas Guibas, developing VoteNet, an innovative technique for 3D object detection in point cloud environments. He also introduced PointContrast, the first large- scale point cloud contrastive representation learning method. He lives in Haifa with his wife, Ayelet, and their three children: Adam, Roni, and Nadav. In his free time, Or enjoys writing and recording music.

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Maya Fennig

Dr. Maya Fennig is a new faculty member in the Bob Shapell School of Social Work at Tel Aviv University. Her research lies in two independent yet inter-related areas of well-being.

The first concerns cross-cultural mental health, exploring how sociocultural contexts shape individuals’ mental health. The second focuses on the psychosocial consequences of exposure to adversity and forced migration on children, youth, and families. As an Azrieli Fellow, Maya will use interviews, focus groups, and innovative arts- based methods – storytelling, drawing, drama and spoken word – in her ethnographic research.

Through these methods, Maya will explore the ways in which protracted displacement unfolds in the lives of war-affected refugee children residing in Italy and shapes their identity, sense of belonging, rights, citizenship, mental health, well-being, and imagined futures.

Her research will be part of a multi-site, multi-year study which will allow Maya and her colleagues to explore protracted displacement in diverse conditions, including reception centres in Italy, urban communities in Israel, and refugee camps and makeshift squats in Greece.

Maya completed her PhD at McGill University’s School of Social Work under the supervision and mentorship of Prof. Myriam Denov. In her dissertation, she explored Eritrean refugees’ interpretations of the effects of trauma, torture, loss, and protracted displacement, as well as their subsequent coping strategies. Maya has worked with non-governmental organizations in both Israel and Canada to promote the health and rights of refugees, for which she received numerous awards including the Jeanne Sauvé Public Leadership Fellowship, and the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship. After living in Montreal for almost a decade, Maya recently moved back to Tel Aviv, where she lives with her partner and two young daughters.

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