Cultivating excellence

Life-changing innovations—from social advancements to scientific breakthroughs—typically require years of research, collaboration and funding. Naomi Azrieli designed the Azrieli Fellows Program, which launched in 2007, to support and empower scholars and researchers from Israel and around the world to exchange ideas and push the boundaries of discovery. To date, the program has brought nearly 600 brilliant minds to participating Israeli universities to work together and conduct high-impact research.

“Our job is to identify the most gifted people, invest in their research and nurture them to become even better,” says Aviad Stollman, the program’s Global Director.

The program has four tracks: Graduate Studies (predominantly PhD candidates), International Visiting PhDs, International Postdoctoral Fellows and the Faculty Early Career track, which is currently being phased out. Research funding is just the start for participants, who come from disciplines ranging from exact sciences and social sciences to law, economics and the humanities. The program also provides invaluable professional mentorship and an environment where interdisciplinary collaboration and cross-cultural dialogue can thrive.

“Israel is a country long recognized for its outstanding contributions to research,” Stollman says. “We want to add to that legacy by creating a global network of researchers who will help to shape academia and leadership in the future.”

Many of us take the humble tomato for granted, but Hermann Prodjinoto, an Azrieli International Postdoctoral Fellow who conducted research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, spends most of his day thinking about, studying and genetically deconstructing the popular vegetable (or, technically, fruit). Growing up in Benin, a country in West Africa, with an uncle who was a farmer, he witnessed first-hand how drought can destabilize food security.

Those early experiences inspired him to find innovative ways to help crops thrive in water-scarce environments, a pursuit that led him to Israel and the Azrieli Fellows Program. Prodjinoto is focusing on how aquaporins, the proteins within cell membranes that regulate the movement of water molecules, can affect a tomato plant’s drought tolerance.

Using gene-editing technology, this plant physiologist is fighting climate change in the best way he knows how—by helping plants adapt. “I am very grateful for my experience as an Azrieli Fellow because it allowed me to contribute to research that not only helps people today, but serves as a foundation for future discoveries,” says Prodjinoto with pride.