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Rector's Update - February 2020 | Office of the Rector

Rector's Update - February 2020

16 February, 2020

Hebrew Version

 

1. Prizes: a) Dani Zamir, from the Faculty of Agriculture, is the Israel Prize laureate in the study of agriculture and the environment. Dani’s lab identifies genes and mechanisms that dictate crop productivity. His integrated breeding efforts unite classical and genomics assisted methods to overcome yield barriers. Dani has made wonderful scientific contributions during his long service at the Hebrew University.

b) The University awards annually the President’s Prize to an Excellent Young Scholar in the memory of Yoram Ben-Porath, who served both as President and as Rector of the University. This year’s recipient of this prestigious award is Shai Carmi from The Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine. Carmi’s lab develops methods and theory in statistical and population genetics, with applications to medicine, biology, and history. Shai excels in research, teaching and public outreach.

c) The Rector’s Prize for Excellence in academic activity is awarded to the following five scholars:

Michal Goldberg (Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences, Faculty of Science), Badi Hasisi (Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law), Shai Morin (Department of Entomology, Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment), Limor Shifman (Noah Mozes Department of Communication & Journalism), Yossi Tam (School of Pharmacy, Faculty of Medicine).

In addition, the Milken Prize is awarded for unique achievements and contributions in teaching. This year’s recipients are:

Ilan Benshalom (Faculty of Law), Lior Herman (Department of International Relations, Faculty of Social Sciences), Naomi Weintraub (School of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Medicine), Alex Samorodnitsky (Rachel & Selim Banin School of Engineering & Computer Sciences),  Anna Aronis (Institute of Biochemistry, Food Sciences & Nutrition, Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment).

The Rector's Prize Ceremony for excellent faculty members and students and the Milken Prize recipients will take place on March 4th, 2020 at 18:00 in the Truman Building, Mt. Scopus. Faculty members are invited to participate and express their appreciation to the awardees.

2. Israel Young Academy, which is part of the Israeli Academy of Science, is conducting a research on public outreach activities of faculty members. They ask for your help in obtaining data, by filling out the form here: http://bit.ly/yiasocpole.

3. Ph.D. students at the Hebrew University. The data indicates a decline in the number of doctoral students at the University. In terms of our share in the public funding of doctoral studies (which equals annually to about NIS 450 million), our performance has declined:

 

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

18.4%

18.5%

18.8%

18.6%

17.4%

16%

16.2%

15.4%

 
We are working extensively to improve doctoral studies at the University. We instructed the academic units to employ specific measures, detailed in the Hebrew version of this letter. A significant challenge is to attract a greater number of excellent international doctoral students. While we are successful in attracting a considerable number of qualified post-doc scholars (with about 700 post-docs annually pursuing their research at the University, about one-half of them non-Israelis), there is still a long way to go in terms of recruiting international PhD’s. The Office of International Affairs (which recently moved to its new offices at the Rothberg School for International Students) has initiated a comprehensive program in this direction. Your help, in giving good advice and in using your contacts abroad, is greatly appreciated.

 

Best, Barak