Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
WEIZM
ANN
INSTITUTE O
F SCIENCE
IntroducingNew Scientists2015-2016
Introducing New Scientists 2015-2016
Table of contents
5 INTRODUCTION
Recruitingthebest
6 DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS
Prof.UriBader Findingsymmetryamidstdisorder
8 DEPARTMENT OF PARTICLE PHYSICS AND ASTROPHYSICS
Dr.ShikmaBressler Beyondthestandardmodel
10 DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS
Dr.RonenEldan Workinginhighdimensions
12 DEPARTMENT OF MATERIALS AND INTERFACES
Dr.MichalLeskes Theinnerlifeofbatteries
14 DEPARTMENT OF ORGANIC CHEMISTRY Dr.NirLondon Anewkindofdrugdiscovery
16 DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS
Prof.VictorMalka Beamsofpromise
18 DEPARTMENT OF STRUCTURAL BIOLOGY
Dr.RinaRosenzweig Cellularhousekeeping
20 DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND APPLIED MATHEMATICS
Dr.GuyRothblum Keepingdataprivate
Introducing New Scientists 2015-2016 is published by
the Department of Resource Development
at the Weizmann Institute of Science
P.O. Box 26, Rehovot, Israel 76100
Tel: 972 8 934 4582
e-mail: [email protected]
Design and production: Dina Shoham Design
Photography: Itai Belson and Ohad Herches
of the Weizmann Institute Photo lab;
Niall David Photography; Joshua Touster
5
The costs run from about $300,000 to
support a theoretical scientist who needs
only computers and help for recruiting
graduate student researchers to several
million dollars for an experimentalist with
a large team and specialized equipment.
The price tag for this year’s new
scientists in terms of their start-up costs
is more than $20 million combined, the
largest sum yet for an incoming group of
new recruits.
We are grateful for the generosity
of our robust community of supporters
around the world who make it possible to
supply our new scientists with everything
they need to start and operate their new
labs—which translates into the freedom to
explore and investigate, and answer key
questions in science that hold meaning
for all of us.
Sincerely,
Prof. Daniel Zajfman
President, Weizmann Institute of Science
INTRODUCTION
Recruiting the bestDear Friends,
The Weizmann Institute of Science
looks for promising researchers who
are rising stars in their fields and who
are pioneering radical new directions
in science. Typically these are
young scientists who are completing
postdoctoral studies abroad and have just
begun their academic careers. Sometimes
we are fortunate to recruit a veteran
scientist who is an established leader in
his or her field. Prof. Victor Malka, who
joins our Department of Particle Physics
and Astrophysics this year is one such
example. Prof. Uri Bader joins us from the
Technion and is another example.
It is the people behind the science who
drive scientific excellence—so when the
Weizmann Institute was ranked 10th in the
world for research quality in the highly
regarded Leiden University ranking earlier
this year, we had our scientists to thank.
Among the many surveys out there, this
survey holds great importance because
it is based on citation data of published
papers, which reflects the quality of the
papers—essentially, their impact. This
rank reflects a significant rise in impact of
Weizmann Institute of Science research.
This year, 13 new recruits are joining
us, including three who begin work
here in 2016. Their quality is absolutely
outstanding, as I trust you will see from
reading their profiles.
To help a scientist establish a new
lab, the Weizmann Institute offers a
commitment of three or more years of
research funding and new equipment.
22 DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY
Dr.RuthScherz-Shouval Discoveringcancer’sdirtytricks
24 DEPARTMENT OF MOLECULAR GENETICS
Dr.SchragaSchwartz MappingRNA
26 DEPARTMENT OF IMMUNOLOGY
Dr.LiranShlush,MD Trackingdownrecurringcancers
28 DEPARTMENT OF IMMUNOLOGY
Dr.ZivShulman Makingstrongerantibodies
30 DEPARTMENT OF NEUROBIOLOGY
Dr.IvoSpiegel Nature-versus-nurture?
32 Newscientistfundsandgifts
6 7
Uri Bader grew up on Kibbutz Givat
Haim Meuchad and received his BSc
summa cum laude from the Technion-
Israel Institute of Technology in
1999 and his PhD in mathematics
from the Technion in 2004. He was
an instructor at the University of
Chicago from 2004 to 2007 and
joined the Technion’s faculty in 2007.
He joins the Weizmann Institute
in 2015.
He received the Technion
mathematics faculty prize for
excellent PhD theses, the Wolf Prize
for excellent PhD students, the Haim
Hanany Prize, the Elisha Nethaniayhu
Prize, and the Technion Excellency in
Teaching Award.
He is married to Galit and they
have four children: a girl and three
boys of ages ranging from 4 to 16.
Prof. Uri Bader
randomness. And the building blocks
of Number Theory are the primes
(2,3,5,7,11...) but the list of prime numbers
behave like a random system too.
All mathematical systems involve a
tension between order and disorder.
Algebra is the mathematical theory
which describes so-called “ordered
systems”. And Group Theory describes
symmetric systems. But on the flip side,
Analysis describes so-called “overly
complicated systems”. And Measure
Theory describes disordered systems.
In his research, Prof. Bader studies the
relationship between the two extremes
of disorder and order: symmetric
patterns in disordered systems, which
has relevance to many areas of math and
science from a theoretical standpoint.
Says Prof. Bader, “I always knew I
would be a scientist, and in fact from
an early age I was attracted especially
to math, though as a child I was not
aware that this is an actual option as a
profession! I am very pleased that I have
found my place to do interesting work.”
PROF. URI BADER DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS
Finding symmetry amidst disorder
In chemistry, for instance, imagine gas
in a container. Tracking every atom
of the gas is beyond the power of any
computer, yet it is reasonably easy to
describe the behavior of the system
as whole in statistical terms. Another
example: In geometry, the famous number
pi (=3.1415...) is very explicit: It is the ratio
between the circumference of a circle
and its diameter. Yet the decimal digits
of it behave in a seemingly complete
Some mathematicians get excited by two seemingly contradictory phenomena: the overwhelming complexity of nature on the one hand, and the unexpected amenability of nature to be described in simple laws. For Prof. Uri Bader, this tension between disorder and order is a driving force behind his curiosity about math.
9
Dr. Shikma Bressler was raised in the
Jezreel Valley. She completed her
BSc summa cum laude in physics and
mathematics at the Technion—Israel
Institute of Technology in 2003,
followed by her MSc there cum laude
in physics in 2006 and PhD in 2011
also at the Technion. In 2012, she
joined the Weizmann Institute of
Science as a postdoctoral fellow.
In 2013 she was appointed a scientist
and formed a particle physics and
detector development team. In 2015
she was promoted to Senior Scientist
in the Department of Particle Physics
and Astrophysics.
Dr. Bressler was honored in 2010
with the Israel Physical Society
(IPS) Ze’ev Fraenkel Prize in Particle
Physics, Nuclear Physics and
Astrophysics. She was awarded
Gutwirth and Polak grants at the
Technion.
Dr. Bressler lives in Moshav Beit
Shearim in the Jezreel Valley and has
two children.
8
Dr. Shikma Bressler
potential of the LHC. Currently,
Dr. Bressler is co-leader of a multinational
team at CERN searching for so-called
lepton flavor violating decays of the
Higgs boson, a quest that challenges
one of the mysterious conservation laws
of nature postulated by the SM. Three
types (flavors) of lepton are known.
The most familiar is the electron, which
is the lightest one, but there are also
the muon and tau leptons. These differ
from the electron only in their mass.
The three lepton flavors carry the same
electric charge and interact with the
other fundamental particles in exactly
the same way. Within the SM, the Higgs
can decay only to a pair of same-flavor
leptons, for instance a tau lepton and an
anti-tau lepton. A decay of the Higgs into
a tau lepton and an anti-muon violates
the lepton flavor number and is forbidden
by the SM. Finding such decays would
revolutionize our understanding of the
fundamental laws of nature.
Dr. Bressler assembled a detector
development team at the Weizmann
Institute which develops novel detection
concepts for large-size radiation-imaging
detectors. Such detectors could improve
the detection techniques currently used
in particle and astroparticle physics
experiments. While this line of work is
motivated by a desire to understand the
fundamental elements of the universe, it
has potential non-scientific applications
in homeland security, medicine,
archaeology, volcanology and more.
DR. SHIKMA BRESSLER DEPARTMENT OF PARTICLE PHYSICS AND ASTROPHYSICS
Beyond the Standard Model
She is an active member of the ATLAS
collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider
(LHC) at CERN that discovered evidence
of the Higgs boson, the final undetected
particle according to the SM. Her current
work involves searching for evidence
of violations of the rules of the SM by
using the data collected by the ATLAS
experiment, and—in parallel—developing
detection techniques and instrumentation
for future experiments.
However, despite its great success
in describing the world of elementary
particles, the SM fails to explain certain
phenomena such as gravity, or the origin
of neutrino mass, or the “dark matter”
needed to describe the rotation of
galaxies. These shortcomings indicate
that the SM is not a complete theory
of nature, suggesting there is more to
discover.
Many models extending the SM have
been developed. The LHC searches for
signatures predicted by these models.
In particular, the ATLAS experiment
was designed to exploit the discovery
Dr. Bressler is pursuing physics beyond the “Standard Model” (SM) that has the potential to shed light on unresolved mysteries of the matter that comprises the universe.
10 11
Dr. Ronen Eldan served for six years
as an intelligence officer and team
leader of a programming group in the
Israel Defense Forces. He received
his BA degree in mathematics magna
cum laude from the Open University
of Israel in 2004, and an extension to
a second discipline in physics summa
cum laude from Tel Aviv University in
2006. In 2012, he received his PhD in
pure mathematics, also from Tel Aviv
University. He conducted postdoctoral
research at the Weizmann Institute,
and in 2013 was a visiting researcher
at Microsoft Research Theory Group
in Redmond, Washington. He joined
the Weizmann Institute in 2015.
Dr. Eldan received the Israel
Mathematical Union’s Haim Nessyahu
Prize for an outstanding PhD
dissertation, and was named to
the President’s list for outstanding
achievements at the Open University.
At Tel Aviv University he was named
to the Dean’s list of excellence,
recognized as an outstanding PhD
student by the Department of
Mathematics, and given the Rector’s
Outstanding Teachers award, which
recognizes outstanding teaching in
the faculties of management and
engineering. He has also served a
volunteer in a children’s shelter run
by the Municipality of Tel Aviv-Jaffa.
Dr. Ronen Eldan
A system is called high-dimensional if its
behavior is determined by a large number
of variables or parameters. Some examples
of such systems are the stock market,
interacting particles of gas, and the human
brain. In these examples, the “dimension”
corresponds to the number of stocks,
gas particles, or neurons, respectively.
These systems are characterized by an
exponential growth of information and
complexity with respect to the dimension,
a fact that makes exact analysis of most
such problems well beyond the reach of
today’s computers. Dr. Eldan’s research
strives to sharpen the theory behind some
of these high dimensional models.
His notable theoretical results include
finding new connections between well-
known conjectures in high-dimensional
convex geometry, proving new inequalities
regarding high-dimensional normal
distributions, and developing new
algorithmic tools for the analysis of high-
dimensional geometric structures.
Dr. Eldan is especially interested in
exploring new ways to apply tools from
the theory of stochastic calculus to prove
results of a geometric nature. Stochastic
calculus is a branch of mathematics that
is used to model systems which exhibit
the behavior of Brownian motion, such
as the stock market. Dr. Eldan has found
new applications of this theory to several
seemingly unrelated, unexpected areas
of mathematics such as high dimensional
convex geometry.
DR. RONEN ELDAN DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS
Working in high dimensions
Following his service in the IDF, and
during his student and postdoctoral
career, Dr. Eldan worked in the high-
tech and financial sectors using applied
mathematics to create software and
solve “real-life” problems such as trading
algorithms and option pricing for the
stock market, and solving wave equations
for survey modeling for a geophysical
exploration group. In his new position
at the Weizmann Institute, he hopes to
integrate new ideas from mathematical
theories and do basic research that has
the potential to help solve mathematical
challenges in signal processing, computer
vision, machine learning, and other
complex problems.
High dimensional probabilistic or
geometric problems appear in various
branches of mathematics, mathematical
physics, and theoretical computer science.
Dr. Eldan is finding new connections between well-known conjectures in high-dimensional convex geometry, proving new inequalities regarding high-dimensionalnormal distributions, and developing new algorithmic tools for the analysis of geometric structures.
12 13
Dr. Michal Leskes was born in Safed,
Israel. Following military service in the
Israel Defense Forces, she completed
a BSc in chemistry summa cum laude
at Tel Aviv University in 2004. She
earned her PhD in chemical physics at
the Weizmann Institute of Science in
2010. After working with Prof. Shimon
Vega at the Weizmann Institute to
develop advanced nuclear magnetic
resonance (NMR) methods, Dr. Leskes
applied her training in solid-state
NMR techniques to study lithium-ion
batteries during her postdoctoral
fellowship at the University of
Cambridge in the UK from 2011 to
2015. She joined the Weizmann
Institute in 2015.
Her undergraduate honors include
Tel Aviv University’s Dean and Rector
awards for outstanding students and
a Knesset award for students. Dr.
Leskes received the John F. Kennedy
Prize for achievements in her PhD
studies at the Weizmann Institute, a
Wolf Foundation Fellowship, and the
Award of Excellence by the National
Postdoctoral Award Program for
Advancing Women in Science. She
won a Marie Curie Postdoctoral
Fellowship from the European
Union and was awarded a Yigal Alon
Fellowship.
Dr. Leskes is married.
Dr. Michal Leskes
in on the action. During her PhD studies
at the Weizmann Institute, she worked
with Prof. Shimon Vega to develop
new methods in solid-state nuclear
magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy.
NMR requires the use of very strong
magnetic fields, attained by super-cooled
electromagnets, together with highly
sensitive electronic instruments that use
precisely controlled radio frequencies
to scan and then read and interpret the
nuclear signatures of the sample. Dr.
Leskes has helped find new ways to tune
the pulses of energy used to scan samples
and to boost the sensitivity and resolution
of the instruments used to read and
interpret the results.
Dr. Leskes has new ideas of how
to improve the performance of NMR
to monitor the inner workings and
performance of batteries, zeroing in on
the rapid chemical changes that take
place on the electrode surfaces and
within the electrolytes surrounding the
electrodes. She hopes her results will
enable her to see more details of even
smaller numbers of atoms and molecules,
and to translate this new information into
the development of new, efficient, and
powerful batteries.
DR. MICHAL LESKES DEPARTMENT OF MATERIALS AND INTERFACES
The inner life of batteries
Lithium-ion batteries have the highest
energy densities among the currently
available chemical energy storage
technologies, with ever-improving power
capabilities; they have helped enable
the portable technology revolution,
powering laptops, cell phones, and
portable instruments. However, lithium-
ion batteries are expensive, have safety
issues, and are not appropriate for large-
scale energy storage.
In any kind of battery, all the “action”
takes place at the interface between the
electrodes and the electrolyte, so this
is where Dr. Leskes concentrates her
investigations. But first she needed to
improve the tools that allow her to zoom
Dr. Michal Leskes uses innovations in magnetic resonance technology to investigate the inner workings of batteries and fuel cells, looking for ways to improve their performance and usher in a new generation of energy storage and use.
14 15
Dr. Nir London served in the
Intelligence Corps in the Israel
Defense Forces. He completed his
BSc magna cum laude in 2006 and
his MSc in 2007, both in computer
sciences and computational
biology at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem. He completed his PhD
in the Department of Microbiology
and Molecular Genetics at the
Hebrew University Hadassah Medical
School in 2011. He served as a
postdoctoral fellow in the Department
of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at
the University of California, San
Francisco, starting in 2012, and joined
the Weizmann Institute in 2015.
His honors include a Rector’s
Scholarship for MSc students
and a Converging Technologies
Fellowship for PhD studies at the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the
Chorev Award of the Israel Chemical
Society, the Dimitris N. Chorafas
Foundation Award, an EMBO long-
term postdoctoral fellowship, and a
postdoctoral award from the Program
for Breakthrough Biomedical
Research. Nir has mentored students
and has helped build and teach a new
course in computational structural
biology.
He is married and has two
daughters.
Dr. Nir London
synthesized some of these compounds
and tested them against their target
proteins.
In conventional drug discovery, once
scientists discover a possible “target,”
that is, a protein that controls an
important step in a disease process, they
painstakingly screen huge libraries of
small molecules, testing for candidates
that bind effectively to the target to
either inhibit or stimulate it without
disrupting other systems in the body.
Thus conventional small-molecule
discovery requires screening of tens
or hundreds of thousands of actual
samples. It is an approach that is often
expensive, wasteful, and turns up many
false positives that must be tested and
eliminated. Structure-based virtual
screening using computers has been
around for two decades, but with recent
improvements in technology and methods,
computerized screening is now common
in the pharma and academia.
Dr. London developed new software
and he has identified potential new
candidates for designing drugs to
overcome resistance to cephalosporin
antibiotics and new ways to target an
enzyme that is a potential therapeutic
target for new drugs for autoimmune
diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. His
discovery of new covalent inhibitors can
generate new chemical compounds for
therapeutic drugs as well as new tools for
better understanding human biology.
DR. NIR LONDON DEPARTMENT OF ORGANIC CHEMISTRY
A new kind of drug discovery
He focused on a class of molecules
overlooked by conventional drug
discovery programs in industry and
academia, molecules that form a covalent
bond—a chemical bond that involves
the sharing of electron pairs between
atoms—with a protein target. These highly
reactive compounds have been avoided
in drug development because they were
considered “promiscuous”—they might
bind to too many targets and generate
too many false positives. However,
covalent compounds bind the protein
far more strongly than regular small
molecules and can lead to a stronger,
more selective, and potent candidate for
a therapeutic drug.
Dr. London developed computational
methods to predict molecular
interactions, first between proteins and,
later between proteins and peptides. He
developed a way to speed up a major step
in the drug discovery pipeline via a new
computational method for discovering
covalent small-molecule inhibitors and
Dr. London has developed new ways to speed up the discovery of a type of specifically targeted new drugs—a quest that could lead to more effective treatments for a wide variety of diseases and disorders.
16 17
Prof. Victor Malka was born in
Casablanca, Morocco. After studies
in engineering at École Nationale
Supérieure de Chimie de Rennes,
France, in (1982–1984), and an
MSc in physics from the Université
d’Orsay in 1987, he completed his
PhD in atomic and plasma physics at
École Polytechnique in Palaiseau in
1990. He became a CNRS Research
Director and a Professor at École
Polytechnique, and formed his
group specializing in laser-based
particle sources at the Applied
Optics Laboratory (LOA), with École
Nationale Supérieure de Techniques
Avancées (ENSTA), CNRS and
the École Polytechnique. He was
chosen for the IEEE/NPSS Particle
Accelerator Science and Technology
Award and was honored as a Laureate
of the European Research Council
for projects on four occasions. He
was awarded the Grand Prize of the
French Academy of Sciences, and
CNRS scientific excellence awards.
He is married to Agnes Finquel, an
artist, and they have two children,
Maya and Dinah.
Prof. Victor Malka
particle beams had tremendous potential.
In effect, he has miniaturized huge radio-
frequency-based particle accelerators
into elegant, compact, but powerful
and flexible plasma accelerators. Such
interactions can accelerate electrons,
protons, highly charged ions, forming
them into ultra-bright beams that can be
easily controlled. Conventional particle
accelerators require large distances to
accelerate particles.
A range of possible applications exist,
from compact X-ray sources that can
scan a nuclear reactor for cracks, a truck
for hidden explosives, or an airplane
wing for stress fractures. On the medical
side, applications include beams for
proton and hadron therapies for treating
radiotherapy-resistant cancers and deep
tumors. He has shown the potential for
electron beam-based radiotherapy cancer
treatment with clinical trials in prostate
cancer and the potential of X-ray beams
for X-contrast imaging for early stage
cancer detection. And they may be used
as a powerful new investigative tool in
physics and chemistry. Prof. Malka says
that the creativity and innovative spirit
that are hallmarks of Israeli culture
make Israel the best place to realize the
applications for his new laser and plasma
discoveries.
PROF. VICTOR MALKA DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS
Beams of promise
Prof. Malka is one of the world’s foremost
experts in the field of lasers interacting
with plasmas. He plans to build a pair of
100 terawatt lasers in a laboratory at the
foot of the iconic Koffler Accelerator.
At peak intensity, the two lasers, among
the most powerful in the world, can
concentrate the power of a fraction of
petawatt (one quadrillion (1015) watts)—a
million times higher than the entire power
consumption of the State of Israel, but
only for a tiny fraction of a second on a
very small area.
Prof. Malka achieved one of his
first major breakthroughs in 2002,
accelerating electrons to high energy
by focusing an intense laser beam onto
a gas jet. He quickly realized that this
revolutionary way of producing energetic
Why would a tenured professor heading a world-famous lab in Paris choose to pack up and move from France to Israel? For Prof. Victor Malka, the answer is: to join the Weizmann Institute of Science and realize his dream of living in Israel.
18 19
Dr. Rina Rosenzweig was born in
Riga, Latvia, moved to Israel with her
parents as a 10-year-old, and grew up
in Haifa. After serving two years in
the Israel Air Force, she enrolled at
the Technion-Institute of Technology
in Haifa, where she spent the next
decade. She completed her BA
cum laude in chemistry. Her PhD in
biochemistry centered on molecular
interactions of the 26S proteasome,
a multi-protein machine that
regulates the life cycle of the vast
majority of cellular proteins.
A fruitful collaboration and a
weeklong visit to the Center for
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging
in Lyon, France, proved a watershed.
Excited by the possibilities of NMR,
Rina chose to pursue this discipline as
a postdoctoral fellow at the University
of Toronto’s departments of
Molecular Genetics, Biochemistry and
Chemistry. She joins the Weizmann
Institute in 2016.
Her academic and professional
honors include the Joseph Freed
and Benjamin Werber Fellowship, an
Irwin and Joan Jacobs scholarship,
and a fellowship for excellence
from the Department of Biology at
the Technion. Dr. Rosenzweig was
a Revson Fellow of the Weizmann
Institute’s Israel National Postdoctoral
Award for Women in Science. She
won an EMBO long-term fellowship,
a Banting postdoctoral fellowship, and
was a finalist for the Lap-Chee Tsui
(CIHR-IG) Publication Award.
Dr. Rosenzweig is married and has
two sons.
Dr. Rina Rosenzweig
Understanding the molecular
mechanism involved in combating
protein aggregation in vivo is essential
to prevent, slow down, or ultimately,
even reverse the progression of these
diseases.
Chaperone proteins are involved in
the cellular quality control systems that
try to correct protein folding errors
and undo the formation of damaging
protein plaques, such as the amyloid
beta plaques associated with Alzheimer’s
disease. In her postdoctoral work,
Dr. Rosenzweig used nuclear magnetic
resonance to reveal the inner workings
of a chaperone system that engages
in aggregate binding, extraction,
threading, and refolding of proteins.
Cells of bacteria, plants, and fungi have
evolved this machinery to neatly extract
polypeptide chains from large aggregates
and refold them. A scientist highlighting
her study in the journal Science said that
it provides “an important advance in
understanding the remarkable ability of
cells to reverse protein aggregation.”
“While I’m only working on a small
section of a very big puzzle, I’m also part
of a much larger community, all of us
attacking a common problem from many
directions,” she says. “I feel that by each
of us breaking off a piece of the puzzle
and trying to solve it, we’ll eventually be
able to understand the whole.”
DR. RINA ROSENZWEIG DEPARTMENT OF STRUCTURAL BIOLOGY
Cellular housekeeping
Dr. Rosenzweig uses nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to understand the cellular mechanisms of diseases associated with protein misfolding and the accumulation of toxic protein aggregates. These include Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Prion disease, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
20 21
Dr. Guy Rothblum received
his BA magna cum laude in
computer science from the Open
University of Israel in 1999 and
his MSc in computer science
from the Weizmann Institute of
Science in 2005. He received his
PhD in computer science from
the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) in 2009, and
went on to complete a postdoctoral
fellowship at Princeton University
in 2011. He was a researcher at
Microsoft Research in Silicon
Valley, California—until 2014, and is
currently a researcher at Samsung
Research America, also in Silicon
Valley. He joins the Weizmann
Institute in 2016.
Dr. Rothblum was awarded a
Computing Innovation Postdoctoral
Fellowship and a Symantec
Graduate Fellowship.
Dr. Guy Rothblum
But with these benefits come risks.
Outsourced data or computations might
be corrupted and fine-grained personal
and sensitive data might fall into the
wrong hands. To avoid falling prey to such
threats, cybersecurity has become a top
priority for businesses, organizations,
and individuals. Dr. Rothblum is an expert
in cryptography—the study of securing
data and computations—and his research
also touches on the study of complexity
theory, machine learning, statistics, and
algorithm design.
His research and approach involve
three key lines of investigation, which
he poses as questions. First, “Can we
verify the correctness of an untrusted
computation without re-executing it?”
This arena is called verifiable computing.
Second, he asks, “Can we data mine
sensitive data while protecting the
privacy of individuals?” The focus here
is so-called privacy-preserving data
analysis. And third, he asks, “Can we
protect computations from attacks that
expose some, or even all, of their internal
components?” That focus, called opaque
computing, offers tools and techniques
for making programs opaque—providing
protection even when an adversary
can observe sensitive activities as they
play out, and has partial access to the
information.
DR. GUY ROTHBLUM DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND APPLIED MATHEMATICS
Keeping data private
Dr. Rothblum learned from some of
the world’s leading computer security
experts during his graduate studies at
the Weizmann Institute and MIT, and is
now charting a career in this increasingly
important field.
In modern computing, sensitive
data and computations are routinely
offloaded to remote providers—and
reside somewhere in a data cloud.
This paradigm comes with tremendous
benefits and empowerment for ordinary
individuals: private banking and monetary
transactions can be performed easily
and swiftly online, medical records can
be stored and accessed, and Internet
algorithms can trace behavioral patterns
and provide a tailored array of services.
Indeed, these developments are
increasingly essential for the modern
global economy.
We are witnessing an explosion in the quantity and sensitivity of personal data and computations that are stored and analyzed online. The need for improved cybersecurity to guarantee the data’s privacy and integrity is greater than ever.
22 23
Dr. Ruth Scherz-Shouval was born and
raised in Rehovot. She earned a BSc
in the life sciences with honors at the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem in
2002 and a PhD in biological chemistry
at the Weizmann Institute of Science
in 2008 with Prof. Zvulun Elazar. She
conducted postdoctoral research in
Prof. Moshe Oren’s laboratory in the
Department of Molecular Cell Biology
at the Weizmann Institute and at the
Whitehead Institute for Biomedical
Research at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. She joined the
Weizmann Institute in 2015.
Her honors include an Aharon Katzir
Center travel fellowship, the Feinberg
Graduate School Dean’s Prize for
PhD students, and a Sir Charles Clore
Postdoctoral Fellowship. She received
a Weizmann Institute of Science
Israel National Postdoctoral Award
for Advancing Woman in Science, a
Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship, and
a Human Frontiers Scientific Program
Long-Term Fellowship. She was
awarded a Stuart Fellowship for cancer
research, and the AACR Scholar-in-
Training Award supported by Susan G.
Komen.
Outside of the lab, Dr. Scherz-
Shouval, and her husband and three
children enjoy hiking in the great
outdoors.
Dr. Ruth Scherz-Shouval
During her PhD studies at the Weizmann
Institute in Prof. Zvulun Elazar’s lab, she
explored the molecular mechanisms of
autophagy, a basic cellular response to
stress. As a postdoctoral fellow with Prof.
Moshe Oren, she studied the regulation of
autophagy by the “anti-cancer” regulatory
gene p53. She found that, despite its
tumor suppressor role, p53 could be
subverted in cancer cells when nutrients
are limited. While serving as a postdoc at
the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical
Research at MIT, she zeroed in on the
heat shock response that cells activate
when subject to thermal stress such as
inflammation.
In her recent work, Dr. Scherz-Shouval
discovered that heat-shock factor 1 (HSF1),
the master regulator of the evolutionarily
conserved heat-shock response to thermal
stress, plays a vital role in the tumor
microenvironment. She showed how HSF1
helps reprogram fibroblasts, the cells
responsible for making the extracellular
matrix and collagen in a tumor’s nearby
tissues, causing them to support the
tumor’s malignancy. In collaboration with
clinicians at the Brigham and Women’s
Hospital and Beth Israel Hospital in Boston,
and Rabin Medical Center in Israel, clinical
studies confirmed that in early-stage
breast and lung cancer, high stromal HSF1
activation is strongly associated with
poor patient outcome, a finding that has
significant diagnostic and therapeutic
implications.
DR. RUTH SCHERZ-SHOUVAL DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY
Discovering Cancer’s dirty tricks
As the daughter of Weizmann Institute’s
Prof. Avigdor Scherz of the Department
of Plant and Environmental Sciences, and
Dr. Zahava Scherz of the Department of
Science Teaching, Dr. Scherz-Shouval
spent much of her childhood playing
on the grounds of the Institute with
friends who were also children of faculty
members. The experience fostered her
natural curiosity; she would always ask
lots of questions, want to understand
why things were the way they were, and
whether she could find a way to change
them. A close family member’s diagnosis
of breast cancer strengthened Dr. Scherz-
Shouval’s determination to help to find a
cure for cancer.
Dr. Scherz-Shouval is interested in how cancer cells recruit and subvert normal cells to create an environment that promotes tumor progression and metastasis. One of cancer’s dirty tricks is to take advantage of survival mechanisms found in the cells of most species and use these regulatory mechanisms to reprogram healthy cells surrounding a tumor to protect the cancer cells and help them grow.
24 25
Dr. Schraga (Schragi) Schwartz
completed a BSc in medicine cum
laude at Tel Aviv University (TAU) in
2006 and completed his PhD there in
2010. After a year as a postdoctoral
researcher in Prof. Rotem Sorek’s lab
at the Weizmann Institute, he served
as a postdoctoral fellow at the Broad
Institute of Harvard and MIT until
joining the Weizmann Institute in 2015.
Dr. Schwartz received a TAU
Rector’s Award, a three-year Edmond
J. Safra Scholarship for outstanding
bioinformatics students, and the
Foulkes Foundation Fellowship. He
received the Wolf Prize for outstanding
PhD students, the Israel Society for
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Prize
for Outstanding Achievements, an
outstanding student award from the
Department of Genetics at TAU, and a
Sheba Hospital Award for outstanding
MD/PhD students. He was also awarded
a Weizmann Institute Dean’s Fellowship
for postdoctoral students. Dr. Schwartz
also won a pair of two-year fellowships:
the EMBO Long-Term Fellowship, and a
Rothschild Fellowship for postdoctoral
students; he was awarded a three-
year Human Frontiers Science Long-
Term Postdoctoral Fellowship and
the RNA Society/Scaringe Young
Scientist Award in recognition of his
postdoctoral achievements in RNA
research.
He has citizenship in Switzerland, the
United States, and Israel.
Dr. Schraga Schwartz
Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT,
Dr. Schwartz developed powerful
new ways to study the roles of RNA
modifications in the biochemistry
of life. He devised experimental and
computational approaches to map diverse
RNA modifications, and is developing
an array of methods using functional
genomics and mass spectrometry to
determine what the various epigenetic
modifications on RNA actually do. For
instance, the innate immune system is
the first line of defense against invading
pathogens, and can recognize and trigger
an immune response in response to viral
RNAs. To ensure that this response is
specific, cells have to distinguish RNA of
viral origin from its cellular counterpart.
Understanding how this recognition
process works can help immunologists
understand the body’s immune response
to viral RNAs, and assist biomedical
researchers seeking to design new RNA-
based therapeutics.
The field of epitranscriptomics is still
relatively new, since techniques that
make it feasible only arose in the last few
years. “It’s fascinating for me to follow
a field from its infancy and to witness
the gradual accumulation of knowledge
over time through the joint work of an
emerging community,” Dr. Schwartz says.
DR. SCHRAGA SCHWARTZ DEPARTMENT OF MOLECULAR GENETICS
Mapping RNA
Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is the crucial
intermediate molecule that allows DNA
to get translated into proteins within
cells. Following their synthesis, DNA,
proteins, and RNA molecules undergo
modifications—called epigenetic changes—
that have the potential to alter their
function or stability.
In his PhD work at the Weizmann
Institute, Dr. Schwartz studied RNA-based
splicing codes, the signals embedded in
strands of DNA that tell RNAs where to
begin cutting-and-pasting snippets of
genetic code to create proteins.
During his postdoctoral research,
first at the Weizmann Institute with
Prof. Rotem Sorek, and then at the
Dr. Schraga Schwartz wants to map, characterize, and understand the 100 or more ways that RNA can modify and change the genetic directions that tell the cell what to do. Until now, scientists have barely touched this additional level of regulation carried out at the level of RNA.
26 27
Liran Shlush was born in Haifa. He
completed his BSc in medical sciences
with honors in 1996 and his MD in
2001 at the Technion—Israel Institute
of Technology. Dr. Shlush served
as Deputy Director of the Israel
Navy Medical Institute during his
military service from 2002 to 2008.
He completed a PhD in population
genetics in 2012 at the Technion,
and did a three-year residency in
internal medicine at Rambam Medical
Center in Haifa from 2008 to 2011. He
served as postdoctoral fellow from
2012-2014, and a clinical fellow in the
leukemia program beginning in 2014,
both at the Princess Margaret Cancer
Center at the University of Toronto
in Ontario, Canada. He joined the
Weizmann Institute of Science in 2015.
His academic and professional
awards include an American Society
of Hematology Scholar Award, a
five-year postdoctoral fellowship at
the McEwen Centre for Regenerative
Medicine in Toronto, an Excellence
in Teaching Award in 2010 from the
Faculty of Medicine at the Technion,
the Itai Sharon Atidim Award at
the Rambam Health Care Campus
in Haifa, the IDF Excellence Award
for First Response Military Medical
Care, and an Excellence Award in the
Internship program at the Rambam
Health Care Campus.
Dr. Shlush is married and has
three children.
Dr. Liran Shlush, MD
without any prior indication of cancer.
Yet AML, like all cancers, arises from the
multi-step accumulation of mutations. On
average, AML cells already carry about 13
mutations at the time of diagnosis. During
his PhD and medical studies, Dr. Shlush
studied leukemia evolution from diagnosis
to relapse. He compared paired samples
from AML patients at various stages of
the disease and treatment.
Dr. Shlush found that blood samples
from AML patients at diagnosis contained
the ancestral stem and progenitor
cells that carried the initiating genetic
events in AML. He was able to show
that these leukemic stem cells survived
chemotherapy and contributed to
leukemia relapse.
Dr. Shlush’s studies have important
implications for future approaches to
prevent relapse. They suggest that it
should be possible to prevent relapse if
the surviving leukemic can be specifically
targeted. He recently started a clinical
study to track large cohorts of AML
patients by taking samples from
diagnosis, after therapy induction, and
every three months during remission
until relapse.
Dr. Shlush is also planning to study the
early stages of leukemia evolution so that
someday early diagnosis and treatment
might be feasible.
DR. LIRAN SHLUSH, MD DEPARTMENT OF IMMUNOLOGY
Tracking Down recurring cancers
During his postdoctoral work, Dr. Shlush
published a major insight into the biology
of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). By
tracking the “family history” of individual
stem cells from the blood of AML patients,
and using deep sequencing to identify
alterations in genes commonly mutated
in AML, he and his collaborators were
able to identify “pre-leukemic” stem cells.
These mutant stem cells go on to form
cancerous cells. When AML patients are
treated with chemo, the cancerous cells
are killed, but these mutant stem cells
remain. The finding holds significant
promise for treatment, earlier diagnosis,
and new screening for AML, and perhaps
other cancers as well. The editors of
Nature Medicine selected this paper as
one of the most notable advances in
medicine in 2014 with great clinical and
scientific implications.
Most cases of AML are diagnosed
What if doctors were able to identify the body’s cells that become cancerous before they actually become cancerous? This possibility may be in the realm of reality, not prophecy, in the not-too-distant-future.
28 29
Dr. Ziv Shulman was born and raised
in Rehovot. Following his army service,
Ziv worked as a veterinary assistant
for a biotechnology company in
Rehovot. He earned his BSc in animal
science at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, and an MSc (2005) and
PhD in immunology (2010), both with
honors, at the Weizmann Institute
of Science. Dr. Shulman worked as
a postdoctoral research fellow at
the Rockefeller University in New
York from 2011 until he joined the
Weizmann Institute in 2015.
Dr. Shulman’s achievements
were recognized by the Weizmann
Institute’s Feinberg Graduate School
through prizes for outstanding MSc
students and for outstanding PhD
students. He received the Rockefeller
University’s Tri-Institutional Breakout
Award for Junior Investigators for
his postdoctoral studies in 2015
(awarded jointly with Memorial Sloan
Kettering Cancer Center and Weill
Cornell Medical College). He received
a Blavatnik Regional Award for young
scientists; EMBO long-term fellowship;
and a Human Frontiers of Science
Program fellowship.
Ziv is married with two children.
He is an avid runner.
Dr. Ziv Shulman
direct visualization and quantification
of the antibody selection process in
living mice by using two-photon laser
scanning microscopy and high-throughput
computerized analysis.
Dr. Shulman found that T cells engage
B cells in multiple, short-lived contacts
during selection. These interactions
cause T cells to produce signaling
proteins called cytokines, which appear
to select and drive B cells to proliferate
and produce antibodies specific to new
threats. Furthermore, the T cells can
move from niche to niche freely, while
the B cells stay in the same lymph node
site where they mutate their antibody
encoding genes and diversify as they form
new antibodies. Dr. Shulman’s findings
describe the cellular mechanism of the
antibody affinity maturation process and
shed new light on the process of acquired
immunity.
His research aims to discover the
cellular and molecular components that
underline successful vaccinations and
immune responses in order to create
new natural antibodies to be used as
immunotherapy to treat tumors and
other diseases. Since these antibodies
are created by the body’s own immune
system, they do not provoke autoimmune
reactions or other side effects.
DR. ZIV SHULMAN DEPARTMENT OF IMMUNOLOGY
Making stronger antibodies
Dr. Ziv Shulman uses fluorescent live-cell
microscopy to discover the molecular
details of this “dance” and capture real-
time images of the antibody selection and
production process.
Forming efficient antibodies against
specific pathogens involves a biological
process called “affinity maturation” in
which random mutations are introduced
into B cell antibody genes. During his
postdoctoral studies, Dr. Shulman
studied how T and B cells interact with
one another during a critical period
following infection in order to prepare
the best antibodies and establish
long-lasting protection. In order to
understand the cellular dynamics of
this process, he developed a system for
Creating antibodies to fight infection involves an intricate cellular and molecular dance. This dance takes place in the body’s lymph nodes between antibody-producing B cells and T helper cells: T cells select B cells to produce antibodies in large quantities.
30 31
Dr. Ivo Spiegel received his BSc
in biology with honors from Tel
Aviv University, his MSc from the
Weizmann Institute of Science
in 2001, and his PhD from the
Weizmann Institute in 2007 in
the Department of Molecular Cell
Biology. He completed a postdoctoral
fellowship in the Department of
Neurobiology at Harvard Medical
School.
His awards and honors
include the Weizmann Institute’s
Feinberg Graduate School prize
for excellence, its Dean’s award,
and its John F. Kennedy Prize. He
received a certificate of excellence
from the Israeli Society for
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
during his PhD studies, a Long-
Term Fellowship from the Human
Frontiers Science Program, and a
Marie Curie International Outgoing
Fellowship from the European
Research Council, an EMBO long-
term fellowship. He also received a
fellowship for advanced researchers
from the Swiss National Science
Foundation and a Louis Perry
Jones Postdoctoral Fellowship from
Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Ivo Spiegel
signal to the next neuron is determined
by the amount of excitation and inhibition
that it receives. The tight control over this
balance between the amounts of excitation
and inhibition (“E/I Balance”) in the face of
changing sensory experiences is critically
important for normal brain function. It is
achieved by regulating the sites through
which neurons connect to each other to
transmit information, the synapses. Indeed,
genetic mutations that affect synapses
and lead to changes in E/I balance were
recently linked to psychiatric disorders
such as autism and schizophrenia.
During his postdoctoral training at
Harvard Medical School, Dr. Spiegel
explored the molecular components
underlying this delicate balancing
mechanism and its effect on brain
function and health. He found that each
type of neuron responds to sensory
stimulation by activating a transcriptional
program that modifies its synapses in a
manner that matches the function of this
specific neuron. The cell-type-specific
transcriptional networks that underlie
these synaptic adaptations include genes
that regulate the expression of other
genes as well as genes that act directly at
synapses. Dr. Spiegel plans to investigate
the inner mechanics of such cell-type-
specific transcriptional networks, and to
test how these gene programs regulate
E/I-balance and the function of cortical
circuits during experience-dependent
behavioral paradigms, and how these
experience-dependent mechanisms are
affected by our internal, emotional states.
DR. IVO SPIEGEL DEPARTMENT OF NEUROBIOLOGY
Nature-versus- nurture?
The function of our nervous system
requires a finely tuned interplay between
molecular, cellular, and systemic
mechanisms, which are not hard-wired
but respond to and are modulated by
how we sense and interact with our
environment. In fact, even within a
single neuron in our brains a multitude
of molecular mechanisms are regulated
by sensory experience and the resulting
neurophysiologic (i.e. electric) activity.
The cortex, a brain area responsible for
sensory processing and memory storage,
is home to a diverse population of neurons,
each with its own distinct function in
the circuit. Excitatatory neurons receive
electric input and generate a stimulating
(i.e. excitatory) output for connected
neurons. Inhibitory neurons do the exact
opposite: They transmit to their connected
neurons a signal that is inhibitory as it
opposes the currents coming from the
excitatory neurons. Thus, whether a given
neuron will or will not send an electric
To what extent does experience and environment dictate brain function, and to what extent do our genes do so? It is a question many have been asking for decades, but science is inching closer to an answer. Dr. Ivo Spiegel’s research aims to tackle this quandary head-on.
32 33
The Delta Career Development Chair in •
Perpetuity
The Aryeh and Ido Dissentshik Career •
Development Chair
The Dr. Victor L. Ehrlich Career Development •
Chair in Perpetuity
The Abraham and Jennie Fialkow Careen •
Development Chair
Alan and Laraine Fischer Career Development •
Chair
The Judith and Martin Freedman Career •
Development Chair
The Samuel and Isabelle Friedman Career •
Development Chair in Perpetuity
The Edith and Nathan Goldenberg Career •
Development Chair
Rina Gudinski Career Development Chair•
The Madeleine Haas Russell Career •
Development Chair in Perpetuity
The Walter and Elise Haas Career •
Development Chair in Perpetuity
The Frances Hersh and Max Hersh Career •
Development Chair in Perpetuity
The Enid Barden and Aaron J. Jade •
President’s Development Chair for New
Scientists in Memory of Cantor John Y. Jade
The Henry Kaplan Career Development Chair •
of Cancer Research in Perpetuity
The Helen and Milton A. Kimmelman Career •
Development Chair
The Carl and Frances Korn Career •
Development Chair in the Life Sciences
The Corinne S. Koshland Career Development •
Chair in Perpetuity
The Dr. Daniel E. Koshland Career •
Development Chair
The Jacob and Alphonse Laniado Career •
Development Chair of Industrial and Energy
Research in Perpetuity
The Alvin and Gertrude Levine Career •
Development Chair
The Lillian and George Lyttle Career •
Development Chair
New scientist funds and giftsTheWeizmannInstituteofSciencehasreceivedsubstantialgiftsforthebenefitofnewscientistsfromthefollowingindividuals,familiesandfunds,andwishestoexpressitsappreciationtothem:
EndowmentsandCenters
Ordered alphabetically
The Abramson Family Center for Young •
Scientists
Ruth and Herman Albert Scholars Program •
for New Scientists
The Asher and Jeannette Alhadeff Research •
Award
A.M.N. Fund for the Promotion of Science, •
Culture and Arts in Israel
Candice Appleton Family Trust•
Estate of David Arthur Barton•
Estate of (Shlomo) Stanislav & Sabine •
Bierzwinsky
Frances Brody Young Scientists Fund•
Raymond Burton Endowment for Prizes•
The Sir Charles Clore Research Prize •
J. Joseph and Betty Auerbach Cohen New •
Scientists Endowment Fund
Crown Endowment Fund for Immunology •
Research
Cymerman-Jakubskind Prize•
Estate of Ernst and Anni Deutsch•
Rena Dweck New Scientist Endowment•
The Enoch Foundation •
Eranda Foundation•
Estelle Funk Biomedical Research Fund•
Fusfeld Fund•
The Larson Charitable Foundation•
Chairs
Ordered alphabetically
Ernst and Kaethe Ascher Career •
Development Chair
The Beracha Foundation Career •
Development Chair
Leonard and Carol Berall Career •
Development Chair
The Miriam Berman Presidential •
Development Chair
Peter and Patricia Gruber Awards•
Harmstieg New Scientist Fund•
IPA Prize for a Promising New Scientist•
Dan Kane•
The Late Sanford Kaplan•
Mel and Joyce Eisenberg Keefer Professorial •
Chair for New Scientists
The Koret Foundation•
Leff Family•
Judith Marks•
Rina Mayer•
Ernst Nathan Biomedical Fund•
The Jordan and Jean Nerenberg Family •
Foundation Young Scientist Endowed Fund
Estate of Paul Ourieff•
Estate of Victor Pastor •
Rayne Foundation•
Robert Rees Applied Research Fund •
The Henry S. and Anne Reich Family Foundation•
Abraham and Sonia Rochlin Foundation•
Estate of Julius and Hanna Rosen•
Lois Rosen•
Louis Rosenmayer•
Rosenzweig-Coopersmith Foundation•
Alice Schwarz-Gardos New Scientist fund•
Soref New Scientists Start up Fund•
The Charles and David Wolfson Charitable Trust•
The Robert Edward and Roselyn Rich Manson •
Career Development Chair in Perpetuity
The Monroy-Marks Career Development Chair•
The Gertrude and Philip Nollman Career •
Development Chair
The William Z. and Eda Bess Novick Career •
Development Chair
Leah Omenn Career Development Chair•
The Recanati Career Development Chair of •
Cancer Research in Perpetuity
The Pauline Recanati Career Development Chair•
The Recanati Career Development Chair of •
Energy Research in Perpetuity
The Joseph and Celia Reskin Career •
Development Chair
The Louis and Ida Rich Career Development •
Chair
The Philip Harris and Gerald Ronson Career •
Development Chair
The Aser Rothstein Career Development Chair•
The Helena Rubinstein Career Development •
Chair
The Martha S. Sagon Career Development Chair•
The Rowland and Sylvia Schaefer Career •
Development Chair in Perpetuity
The Lewis and Alice Schimberg New Scientist •
Chair
Sara Lee Schupf Career Development Chair •
The Skirball Chair in New Scientists•
The Benjamin H. Swig and Jack D. Weiler •
Career Development Chair in Perpetuity
The Dewey David Stone and Harry Levine •
Career Development Chair
The Sygnet Career Development Chair for •
Bioinformatics
The Tauro Career Development Chair in •
Biomedical Research
The Shlomo and Michla Tomarin Career •
Development Chair
The Morris and Ida Wolf Career Development •
Chair in Perpetuity
The Dr. Celia Zwillenberg-Fridman and Dr. Lutz •
Zwillenberg Career Development Chair
Jenna and Julia Birnbach Family Career •
Development Chair
The Elaine Blond Career Development Chair •
in Perpetuity
The Adolfo and Evelyn Blum Career Development •
Chair of Cancer Research in Perpetuity
The Anna and Maurice Boukstein Career •
Development Chair in Perpetuity
The Roel C. Buck Career Development Chair•
34 35
ordered by giving level
T• he Norman E. Alexander Family Foundation
The Pearl Welinsky Merlo Foundation•
John L. Schwartz•
Harold Altman Charitable Trust•
Spencer Charitable Fund•
Alan Fischer•
Bernard and Audrey Jaffe Foundation•
The Arie and Ida Crown Memorial Charitable •
Fund
Norman and Marilyn Weizenbaum •
Philanthropic Fund
Marc Utay•
United Mashadi Jewish Community of •
America
Stanley Lupkin•
Estate of Jacob C. Muskin•
Sol and Harriet Price•
Bruce G. Pollack•
Jay A. Levy•
Kekst Family Foundation•
Saul Waring•
Lon Morton•
Richard and Liselotte (Lee) Laster•
The Enoch Foundation •
Sheldon Rose•
Ira Mondry•
The Gurwin Family Fund for Scientific •
Research
Robert Belfer•
Sally Leafman Appelbaum•
Stone Charitable Fund•
Beacon Foundation•
David E. Stone•
The Bengualid Foundation•
Lewis Family Trust•
Charna Larkin•
Abbott•
Larry Marks and Gladys Monroy•
Howard Garoon•
Marshall and Debra Levin•
Jon M. Kaufman•
Antonio and Noga Villalon•
Elaine Yaniv•
Eleanore Reznik•
The Joseph and Bessie Feinberg Foundation•
Carla Hunter and Andre M. Schub•
Nona Abrams•
Marla Bergmann•
Isadore Gudelsky Family Foundation•
Laura Bryna Gudelsky Mulitz•
Kittay Foundation •
Alberto Culver Co.•
Grosvenor Capital Management•
Edwin Johnson Family Philanthropic Fund •
Donald Kirk•
Omenn Darling Family Advised Fund•
Office of the Commissioner of Baseball•
Allan B. Zelinger•
Jerrold & Jacqueline Rosenwasser•
Goldman Sachs•
Irving and Dorothy Rom Charitable Trust•
Lois Zoller•
Scott David Greenberg•
Harris Family Foundation•
Paula and Philip Zeid•
Political Risk Products•
Mesirow Financial•
Akiva Gross•
Phillip C. & Beverly Goldstick•
Gordon Segal•
Richard Melman•
Michael Levine•
Anschel-Eilian Family Charitable Foundation•
AmericanCommitteefortheWeizmannInstituteofScience70thAnniversaryLab(Dr.NoamStern-Ginnosar)
GeneralSupport
Ordered alphabetically
Estate of Ernest Ascher (dec)•
Robert H. and Mary Jane Asher•
The Berlin Family Foundation•
Bernstein Family Foundation•
Edith C. Blum Foundation•
Blythe Brenden-Mann New Scientist Fund•
Carolito Stiftung•
Ben & Joyce Eisenberg Foundation•
Charles Fabrikant•
Ilan Gluzman•
The Gurwin Family Fund for Scientific •
Research
Norman Huber•
Alan S.and Liz Jaffe•
Bruce Kanter•
Mitchell T. Kaplan•
Fondazione Henry Krenter•
Estate of David Levidow•
Estate of David Levinson•
The Jeanette and Mason Loundy New •
Scientists Fund
Rhoda R. Mancher•
Charles Milgrom•
Janice Montana•
Andrew R. Morse•
Irving and Cherna Moskowitz•
Rising Tide Foundation•
Rose L. Shure•
The Late Rudolfine Steindling •
Sam Switzer•
Yael and Rami Ungar•
Rolando Uziel•
The Wolfson Family Charitable Trust •
Zumbi Stiftung•
36
Scientist-specificfunding
Michal Leskes
Comisaroff Family Trust•
Dana and Yossie Hollander•
Nir London
Ruth and Herman Albert Scholars Program for •
New Scientists
Rina Rosenzweig
Blythe Brenden-Mann New Scientist Fund•
Ruth Scherz-Shouval
Estate of Annice Anzelewitz•
The Gurwin Family Fund for Scientific Research•
Ms. Hilda Namm•
David M. Polen Charitable Trust•
Dr. Zwi & Amelia Steiger Cancer Research Fund•
Shraga Schwartz
The Abramson Family Center for Young Scientists•
Liran Shlush
The Morris & Ruth Wagner and Marek Sutkiewicz •
Laboratory for Cancer Research
Ziv Shulman
The Sir Charles Clore Research Prize •
Kahn Foundation•
Rising Tide Foundation•
Comisaroff Family Trust•
Irma & Jacques Ber-Lehmsdorf Foundati• on
WEIZM
ANN
INSTITUTE O
F SCIENCE
IntroducingNew Scientists2015-2016
