Eduardo Arlé

Dr. Eduardo Arlé is an Azrieli International Postdoctoral Fellow in the George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences at Tel Aviv University under the supervision of Prof. Jonathan Belmaker.

His primary areas of research are invasion biology and nature conservation, but his interests extend to method development and programming.

Hundreds of species have migrated from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea through the Suez Canal, establishing alien populations that can disturb the local environment. Understanding the dynamics driving biological invasions is crucial for controlling the spread of species already established and preventing the future introduction of new alien species. However, the methods currently available for predicting species distribution have severe limitations. Eduardo’s research uses the Mediterranean as a case study for developing new methods, best practices, and computational tools to advance invasion biology research and management.

Eduardo was born in Rio de Janeiro and has had a strong interest in observing and understanding nature since childhood. After obtaining a BA in international relations, he felt more drawn to biology and went on to complete a BSc in biological sciences and an MSc in neotropical biodiversity at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He pursued his PhD at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, under the supervision of Dr. Carsten Meyer, where he worked on improving knowledge of alien species distribution by integrating data across scales. Apart from science, Eduardo enjoys travelling, learning languages, cooking, and eating delicious food

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Dana Rubinstein

Dana Rubinstein is a PhD student in the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem under the supervision of Prof. Benjamin Pollock.

Her research focuses on the extensive and largely unpublished collection of working papers by Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig which underlies their monumental Bible translation project.

By mining the depths of the Buber-Rosenzweig Bible and the dialogue surrounding it, Dana seeks to demonstrate the possibilities and limitations of Bible translation as a unique exegetical medium and to construct a hermeneutic method for using Bible translations as commentary.

Dana was born in Israel and grew up in Germany, Austria, and the United States. She received her BA in philosophy from Yale University and her JD from Columbia University. She subsequently worked as a litigator at Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York, where she specialized in corporate litigation and white-collar crime but also had the opportunity to work on pro bono asylum cases. She is the co-founder of Dapple, a mission-driven consumer products start-up which makes plant- based cleaners and personal care products for homes with children. In 2014, Dana made aliyah with her husband and four children and returned to academia. Completing her MA in jewish thought at the Hebrew University, she wrote her thesis on Nehama Leibowitz’s exegetical use of translations. In her free time, Dana enjoys reading, listening to music, and experimenting with new recipes and cocktails before unleashing her concoctions on unsuspecting guests.

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Cheyn Lambert

Cheyn Lambert is an architect and MSc student in the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology under the supervision of Prof. Alona Nitzan-Shiftan.

Her research seeks to identify structuralist and semiotic theories in the pedagogy of the Technion’s Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning between 1975 and 1994 through interviews with pedagogues and archived materials.

Through her research, Cheyn hopes to show how structuralist theories bridged the transition of the curriculum from modernism to postmodern teachings. As many of Israel’s leading architects were trained in this era, her research looks to contribute to our understanding of Israel’s current architectural environment.

Cheyn was born in Jerusalem. She grew up in a bilingual home in Canada and Israel and currently lives in Haifa. She received her BSc in design sciences and MArch from the Technion. Cheyn worked as a research assistant during her studies and today continues to develop her thesis- studio project on platforms for marginalized voices in Lod. In addition, she guides historical research projects as a teaching assistant. Having previously volunteered as a Hebrew teacher to immigrant children, she now volunteers as the faculty representative of graduate students, working to advance both the research and social lives of her colleagues while connecting them with one another. Her hobbies include creative experimental pursuits such as painting and crafts, reading, and piano playing.

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Carlos Bravo-Laguna

Dr. Carlos Bravo-Laguna is an Azrieli International Postdoctoral Fellow in the Federmann School of Public Policy and Government at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem under the supervision of Prof. David Levi-Faur.

His research interests cover public policy and crisis management and the evolution of regulatory oversight across the OECD.

In particular, his primary area of research examines crisis networks with a focus on their performance during transboundary incidents. Carlos aims to link structural characteristics of crisis networks to policy outcomes by determining which conditions affect their ability to produce rapid and effective emergency reactions. He thus hopes to contribute to the definition of crisis networks and shed light on how network theory explains crisis management. Carlos is also looking to assess factors that impact the role and weight of EU actors in the governance of external crisis responses.

Carlos has a BA in translation and interpreting from the University of Granada and an MA in international relations from the Barcelona Institute of International Studies (IBEI). He completed his PhD in political and social sciences at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, exploring the role and weight of the EU in the management of external transboundary crises, and was subsequently a visiting research fellow at University of Konstanz, University of Tübingen and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He served as an events officer in the UACES Graduate Forum and is part of the coordination team of the UACES Research Network, RELATE (European Studies in a Relational Universe). His research has been published in various journals, including the Journal of Common Market Studies, the Journal of European Integration, Environmental Sciences Europe, and the Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management. In his free time, Carlos likes running and hiking with friends. While he considers himself quite sociable, Carlos also enjoys spending quality time at home, reading books, watching films, cooking, or playing computer games.

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Aviv Orner

Aviv Orner is a PhD student in the Seymour Fox School of Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem under the supervision of Prof. Adam Lefstein and Dr. Hadar Netz from Tel Aviv University.

She is interested in the connections between language, gender, and sexuality as expressed in public spaces, traditional and social media, and, especially, educational contexts.

Her research focuses on gender equity in classroom discourse in Israeli primary schools. She examines how gender equity can be promoted by developing criteria for interpreting and measuring gender bias in classroom discourse, designing new practices to reduce gender bias (together with teachers in the field), and examining the outcomes and implications of these interventions. She believes her research will contribute to our understanding of the mechanisms of gender inequality in the crucial arena of education and help rectify these inequalities both in the classroom and on the societal level.

Aviv completed her BA in Hebrew linguistics and communication at Oranim College of Education, where she was the head of the student union and a board member of the National Union of Israeli Students. She also worked as a Hebrew teacher in middle school. She completed an MA in the Program for Multilingual Education at Tel Aviv University, where she began researching language and gender in classroom discourse. For as long as she can recall, Aviv has been involved in social and educational activism. She was the president of the student council in high school and a youth movement counsellor, completed a year of community service before her military service, and served in the IDF Education Corps. In her free time, Aviv enjoys travelling, learning about new places, cultures, and people, and attending concerts, theatre, and art exhibitions.

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Avital Wagner

Avital Wagner is a PhD student in the Department of Chemistry at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev under the supervision of Azrieli Early Career Faculty Alum Dr. Benjamin Palmer.

Her research focuses on the formation and crystallization pathways of biogenic guanine crystals.

In nature, the assembly and morphologies of these crystals are exquisitely controlled to create different optical phenomena associated with animal coloration and vision. However, almost nothing is known about how organisms make the crystals themselves. Avital follows the morphogenesis of guanine crystals in model organisms during development using cryogenic scanning and transmission electron microscopy and synchrotron x-ray diffraction methods. Her aim is to adapt the strategies used by organisms to the laboratory and develop new green routes for making the artificial molecular crystals used in optics, pharmaceuticals, and other fields.

Avital grew up in Rehovot and currently lives in Be’er Sheva. While growing up, Avital was a competitive swimmer on the Maccabi-Weisgal- Rehovot team. She did her military service as a chemistry and materials lab assistant in the Technology and Maintenance Corps. While completing her BSc and MSc degrees in materials engineering at Ben-Gurion University, she actively participated in tutoring and mentoring students and organizing enrichment activities. Avital’s MSc studies centred on optical properties of doped ceramics, and she has multiple publications resulting from her research. In her spare time, Avital enjoys reading books, playing word games, spending time with family and friends, and hiking around the Negev desert.

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Anna Uzonyi

Anna Uzonyi is a PhD student in the Department of Molecular Genetics at the Weizmann Institute of Science under the supervision of Prof. Schraga Schwartz.

Her research focuses on understanding the role of chemical modifications of RNA nucleotides.

Of central importance to Anna’s research is deciphering how RNA structure determines the deposition of the RNA modification inosine, which is involved in the immune response to viral infections and plays a role in autoimmune diseases. In an additional research project, Anna is assessing how another modified RNA base regulates the lifespan of RNA molecules, using both experimental methods and computational analysis. Anna hopes that her research will lead to a better mechanistic understanding of RNA modifications and consequently help the development and improvement of RNA-based therapeutics.

Anna was born and raised in Budapest, Hungary. During high school, she had the opportunity to learn university-level biology and experimental methods and participate in national and international science competitions, including the International Biology Olympiad in Switzerland and Indonesia. She moved to Munich, Germany for her undergraduate studies in molecular biotechnology. During her studies, Anna completed several research internships abroad: she studied protein translation at the Weizmann Institute in Israel, influenza virus in Oxford, ovarian cancer in Singapore, and non- coding RNAs in Germany. She moved to Israel to pursue her MSc in life sciences in the Weizmann Institute and stayed for subsequent PhD research. In her free time, Anna enjoys travelling, hiking, and sports activities. She likes reading fantasy and science fiction novels and is enthusiastic about cooking, baking, and cake decoration. In addition, Anna enjoys debating and has participated twice in the European Universities Debate Championship.

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Anat Arzi

Dr. Anat Arzi is a new faculty member in the Department of Medical Neurobiology and the Department of Cognitive and Brain Sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Her research combines basic and clinical neuroscience to answer how we process the world under loss of consciousness.

Anat’s work focuses on two central unconscious states: natural loss of consciousness during sleep and pathologically altered consciousness following brain injuries. By recording diverse aspects of brain–body activity, her goal is to shed additional light on principles underlying the ability to process the world around us unconsciously. As an Azrieli Fellow, Anat will investigate the neurophysiological processes underlying consciousness recovery in patients with severe brain injuries and develop new methods to detect consciousness and predict recovery in brain-injured patients.

Anat completed her PhD in neurobiology in the lab of Prof. Noam Sobel at the Weizmann Institute of Science. During her doctoral studies she harnessed the unique characteristics of olfaction to study the processing, learning, and memory of unperceived stimuli in wakefulness and sleep and discovered that, in contrast to previous notions, humans can learn novel information during sleep. In her postdoctoral work, she pursued the investigation of unconscious brain abilities and limits in the labs of Prof. Tristan Bekinschtein at the University of Cambridge and Prof. Jacobo Sitt at the Paris Brain Institute. She developed an innovative approach for consciousness detection, demonstrating that olfactory sniffing can serve as a biomarker for consciousness recovery in brain-injured patients. Anat lives with her spouse, Gadi, and their daughter, Naomi, and enjoys poetry, French patisserie, and yoga.

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Anat Horowitz Harel

Anat Horowitz Harel is an architect and MA student in the Azrieli School of Architecture at Tel Aviv University under the supervision of Prof. Talia Margalith.

Her research aspires to increase the participation of children in city planning processes, thus grounding their right to the city.

Anat looks at the case of Israel from an international lens, and her ensuing comparative research contributes to the scholarly literature in Hebrew about children’s right to cities. Her research uses qualitative methods including in-depth interviews with professionals in the field, assessments of fieldwork conducted by various initiatives looking to change children’s right to the city, and analyses of materials and products from relevant processes. Anat hopes that her research will help raise the awareness of Israeli planners and architects regarding the perspective of children on the use of the city and establish operative policy directions to promote built environment education (BEE) for children, thus deepening children’s knowledge of the urban environment.

Anat was born in Jerusalem and currently lives in Ramat Gan with her spouse and two daughters. She received her BArch in architecture and town planning from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. Over the last 15 years, she has engaged in planning policy, strategic planning, and environmental planning in civil society organizations and now works as an expert in the field of sustainable public space at the Israeli Green Building Council. As part of her ongoing voluntary work, Anat represents the Israel Association of Architects and Urban Planners in the UIA Architecture and Children Work Program. In her free time, Anat likes to wander around cities in Israel and throughout the world.

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Amit Manor Armon

Amit Manor Armon is a PhD student in the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology under the supervision of Prof. Charles Diesendruck.

Amit’s research focuses on a new methodology for the design and synthesis of kinetically stable quaternary ammonium (QA) salts for renewable energy applications.

Electrochemical devices, such as fuel cells and flow batteries, are seen as game- changing opportunities for the storage and conversion of green energy. QA are embedded in anion exchange membranes which are, in terms of lifetime, the limiting component in these devices. By modelling different degradation pathways and varying electronic and steric parameters, Amit aims to identify the QA weak spots, synthesize new “hits,” and test their stability experimentally. Her unique approach of modelling prior to synthesis will allow for better understanding of the structure–property relationships in bottom-up QA design, hopefully promoting their implementation in the green energy field.

Amit was born and raised in Haifa, where she currently lives with her husband and daughter. Her academic path started in high school when she enrolled in the Technion Archimedes chemistry program. After five years of military service as, mostly, an intelligence officer, she returned to the academic world, completing her BSc in chemistry and art history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she also pursued her MSc in chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Ori Gidron. In her free time, Amit enjoys hiking with her family and horseback riding.

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