The Kalaniyot Foundation is proud to present the 2026–2027 cohort — our largest yet. As the academic year begins, dozens of Israel's brightest researchers, fellows, and scholars are joining us, representing nearly every corner of academic life, from chemists and architects to food scientists and historians.
This marks Kalaniyot's third cohort: 39 outstanding fellows and scholars joining our chapters at MIT, Harvard, Columbia, Penn, Dartmouth, and Cornell. Since Kalaniyot's founding, we've now supported 62 fellows and scholars across a chapter network that has grown to 7 universities. Each milestone reflects the trust and generosity of the Kalaniyot community at large.
Advancing academic excellence
This year's fellows and scholars will pursue cutting-edge work across the sciences, engineering, medicine, the social sciences, and the humanities — building lasting scientific collaborations with Israeli colleagues and enriching the campus communities that host them.
We are deeply grateful for your continued support and remain as committed as ever to our mission: advancing academic excellence by deepening ties with Israeli scholars and building a vibrant, supportive campus community.
Click on each fellow's face to learn more about their research and their Kalaniyot fellowship.
Fellow & Scholar Profiles
Select a fellow to see their host, research proposal, and bio.
Yael Alush completed her PhD in Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as an Azrieli Fellow, under the supervision of Nicholas Stone.
Her research focuses on massive black holes at the centers of galaxies and on the dynamics of the star clusters that surround them. She studies two of the most extreme events in the universe: tidal disruption events, in which a star is torn apart by the gravitational forces of a supermassive black hole, and extreme mass ratio inspirals, in which a compact object gradually spirals into a massive black hole while emitting gravitational waves. Her work addresses key uncertainties in theoretical models, contributing directly to tests of Einstein's theory of general relativity.
As a Kalaniyot Postdoctoral Fellow she joins the Department of Physics at Columbia University.
Shahar Arzy is Director of the Computational Neuropsychiatry Lab at the Hebrew University and lead neurologist at the Neuropsychiatry Clinic at Hadassah Medical Center.
His work bridges clinical neurology and computational cognitive neuroscience, studying how the brain represents self, memory and meaning under both healthy and disordered conditions.
As a Visiting Scholar at the Dartmouth Kalaniyot Chapter, he is fostering cross-disciplinary collaboration with Dartmouth researchers in psychological and brain sciences, neurology and cognitive science, with particular emphasis on ecologically valid behavioral paradigms and the neural underpinnings of life significance and personal meaning.
Loai Basheer is a member of the Food Sciences Department at Tel-Hai University in Kiryat Shmona and the Galilee.
At Cornell he works with Prof. Gavin Sacks in the Department of Food Science, investigating how the spotted lanternfly affects the chemical composition and sensory quality of grape-derived products, with particular attention to the risks of insect co-processing during mechanical harvesting.
Using a range of insect inclusion levels, the research applies metabolomics, volatile profiling and sensory evaluation to identify the key drivers of quality defects. The goal is to determine how the spotted lanternfly alters bioactive and aroma compounds, ultimately giving the industry a framework to manage contamination risks and preserve product quality.
Ezra Ben-Abu is a PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering at the Technion and an Azrieli Fellow.
His research focuses on multistable structures, architected materials, soft robotics, deployable structures and metafluids. During his doctoral studies he developed a novel method for programming and fabricating multistable structures by harnessing mechanical instabilities and nonlinear deformations in thin cylindrical shells.
As a Kalaniyot Fellow at Columbia University, his postdoctoral research will explore the autonomous construction of adaptive structures and scalable fabrication strategies for next-generation reconfigurable architectures.
Avital Ben-Haim is a Blavatnik Fellow in Life Sciences at Harvard Medical School, working in the laboratory of Prof. Stephen Blacklow in the Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology. She completed her PhD in Biochemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in collaboration with the Volcani Institute under the joint supervision of Prof. Guy Mechrez and Prof. Elazar Fallik, with doctoral research on the mechanistic design of protein-based and colloidal nanocarriers for biological delivery and how interfacial chemistry, surface charge and nanoscale organization govern interactions with living systems.
She earned her M.Sc. in Chemistry at Bar-Ilan University, jointly supervised by Prof. Chaim Sukenik and Prof. Guy Mechrez, working on emulsions stabilized by carbon nanotubes and silica nanoparticles, and holds a B.Sc. in Biochemistry from the Hebrew University. During her graduate studies she served as a teaching assistant and lecturer in physics and food engineering courses at the Hebrew University, earning recognition for excellence in teaching, and received a poster award at the 50th Conference of the Israeli Polymers & Plastics Society.
Her fellowship research focuses on the structural and mechanistic basis of planar cell polarity signaling, a fundamental pathway that enables cells to align with their neighbors across a tissue and that, when disrupted, can lead to developmental defects such as spina bifida, hearing loss and kidney abnormalities. She is investigating the CELSR1–VANGL2 complex, a core molecular assembly that acts as a compass allowing cells to orient within a tissue, combining AlphaFold structure prediction, protein engineering, cryo-electron microscopy and cell-based assays to define how the complex forms and how disease-associated mutations disrupt its assembly and function. Through this work she brings her background in materials science, imaging and delivery systems to fundamental questions in cell biology.
Gabriel Braun is completing his PhD in neuroscience at Tel Aviv University.
His interdisciplinary research explores how people process and represent truth, trust and commitment in communication, drawing on cognitive neuroscience, psychology, linguistics and computational modeling. Using behavioral experiments, naturalistic narratives and language models, he investigates how the processing of truth influences the ways individuals and their brains respond to information and misinformation.
As a Kalaniyot Postdoctoral Fellow at Dartmouth College, he continues this work in collaboration with Dr. Emily Finn in Psychological and Brain Sciences.
Amitay Cohen is a junior faculty member and consulting physician in pediatric endocrinology at Hadassah–Hebrew University Medical Center in Jerusalem. He earned his B.Sc. in Biology, summa cum laude, from Tel Aviv University and his M.D. from the Hadassah–Hebrew University Medical School, then completed his residency in pediatrics and a fellowship in pediatric endocrinology at Hadassah.
Clinically, he is an attending physician in pediatrics at Hadassah Mount Scopus and manages an active, diverse pediatric endocrinology clinic. He also leads dedicated cystic fibrosis–related diabetes and multidisciplinary endocrinology–nephrology clinics. He is deeply involved in medical education, having previously directed the student pediatric clerkship, and serves on the Israeli government medical licensure examination staff and the Pediatric Board Examination Committee.
As a clinician-researcher, his work bridges bedside clinical puzzles with basic laboratory science. His current research focuses on the genetic mechanisms of ovarian dysgenesis and on novel approaches to rare genetic forms of diabetes, including Wolfram Syndrome Type 2. His contributions have been recognized with competitive research grants and honors, including the Endocrine Society Outstanding Abstract Award in 2023 and the Israeli Society for Clinical Pediatrics Outstanding Poster Award in 2025.
Lital Dabush received her PhD from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, where her research focused on graph signal processing, statistical signal processing and model-based deep learning, with applications to dynamic network inference, sampling and recovery, and detection in areas such as power systems, transportation networks and wireless sensor networks.
She completed both her B.Sc. in Physics (cum laude) and her B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering (summa cum laude) in 2020, followed by an M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering (cum laude) in 2021, all at Ben-Gurion University.
Her work has been recognized with the Intel Prize for Outstanding Students, the Apple Excellence Award, the Ministry of Energy PhD Fellowship and the Ariane de Rothschild Women's Doctoral Fellowship. She also gained industry experience as a student algorithm developer at Mobileye.
Gal Finkelstein-Zuta holds dual B.Sc. degrees in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, followed by an M.Sc. and PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from Tel Aviv University. Her doctoral research, supervised by Prof. Ehud Gazit, led to the discovery of a transparent, adhesive, peptide-based glass with exceptional properties, published in Nature. The work was recognized with the Graduate Student Gold Medal Award from the Materials Research Society, and she is also a recipient of the Zuckerman STEM Leadership Program Fellowship.
Her research lies at the intersection of materials science, chemistry and biology, focusing on how the molecular organization of biological building blocks gives rise to functional materials. During her PhD she investigated the fundamental principles governing the self-assembly of short peptides into both ordered and disordered architectures, and in particular the mechanisms enabling exceptional structures such as amorphous peptide-based glass.
As an MIT-Kalaniyot Postdoctoral Fellow in the MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering, her goal is to leverage programmable self-assembly for the scalable fabrication of materials with properties that are otherwise difficult to realize through conventional approaches.
Ofer Hadar is a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, with internationally recognized expertise in multimodal AI, computer vision and adversarially robust perception systems. His research focuses on developing trustworthy AI-driven robotics that can interpret visual scenes, understand natural-language commands, and navigate complex environments safely and reliably.
As a Visiting Scholar at the Dartmouth Kalaniyot Chapter, he works alongside Professors Peter Chin and Bryce Ferguson at the Thayer School of Engineering, helping lead a collaborative project that uses Dartmouth's Boston Dynamics Spot robot to explore how vision-language models can improve robotic reasoning and interaction in real-world settings. The research also investigates defenses against adversarial visual attacks — such as deceptive "cyber patches" designed to confuse AI systems — while integrating reinforcement learning and advanced control methods to create more resilient autonomous robots.
The collaboration may extend to efficient video communication and compression between the robot and cloud-based AI systems under real-world bandwidth and latency constraints, advancing Dartmouth's growing work in embodied AI, robotics and trustworthy machine learning.
Roni Hahn is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Pediatric Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Boston Children's Hospital. She earned her PhD from the Gray Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences at Tel Aviv University under the supervision of Prof. Karen Avraham, and previously completed an M.Sc. in Molecular Genetics at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
Her doctoral research focused on genetic therapies and the mechanistic basis of the auditory and vestibular systems. The work deepened understanding of these disorders and demonstrated the potential of gene therapy to restore sensory function, laying groundwork for safer and more effective inner ear gene therapies with potential for clinical translation. She led that research in collaboration with colleagues at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital through the U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation, making her move to Harvard for postdoctoral training a natural next step.
As a Dorot Fellow at Harvard Medical School, now in Dr. Robbie Majzner's laboratory, she has extended her expertise in targeted genetic therapies for inherited disorders into cancer immunotherapy. Her current research develops an in vivo platform for engineering targeted CAR T cells for pediatric solid tumors, generating and optimizing therapeutic CAR T cells directly within the body, and she hopes to contribute to innovative therapies that ultimately benefit patients.
Elhanan Harel joins Dartmouth from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, where he earned his PhD in Earth and Environmental Sciences.
His research integrates geospatial analysis, modeling and fieldwork to investigate the evolution of drainage networks and sediment transport systems, from mountainous headwaters to deep marine environments.
As a Kalaniyot Postdoctoral Fellow he works within the planetary geomorphology group led by Dr. Marisa Palucis, focusing on Martian drainage systems. His research combines field observations with quantitative geomorphic analysis to better understand the fluvial processes that shaped planetary landscapes and influenced the geological history of Mars.
Naomi Havron is a professor in the Department of Psychology and the Interdisciplinary Programs in Child Development at the University of Haifa.
At Cornell she is collaborating with Professor Nori Jacoby in the Department of Psychology to develop PsyNetTot, an online research platform adapted from the Jacoby Lab's PsyNet system and designed to overcome the logistical and behavioral challenges of studying infants and young children.
By integrating her expertise in developmental science with her close collaboration with the Jacoby Lab, the platform will enable large-scale, global and adaptive studies addressing five fundamental questions of human nature: the mapping of words to concepts, the acoustic appeal of "baby talk," the universality of musical octave equivalence, the triggers for early moral judgment, and global preferences in children's music.
Shira Hebel-Sela is completing her PhD in psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in the direct PhD track for outstanding students, under the supervision of Prof. Eran Halperin (Hebrew University) and Prof. Boaz Hameiri (Tel Aviv University). Her dissertation is on optimizing psychological intergroup interventions. She holds a B.A. in International Relations and Psychology from the Hebrew University.
Her research examines how violent intergroup conflict shapes belief — including susceptibility to conspiracy theories — and how psychological interventions can be designed, tailored and scaled to improve intergroup relations. Her published work spans intergroup dehumanization during COVID-19, a 66-nation study of conspiracy belief in societies in conflict, self-affirmation campaigns supporting intergroup equality, the paradoxical effects of political elite radicalization, and a field quasi-experiment showing that virtual contact improves relations between non-Muslim American and Muslim students.
Her work has been supported by the President's Scholarship for Outstanding PhD Students, a HUJI-UNIGE joint seed grant with Prof. Eran Halperin, the Sturman Traveling Grant and a Faculty of Social Sciences excellence scholarship. In 2017 she was named to Yedioth Ahronoth's list of the 50 most influential social leaders in Israel for leading a campaign to improve public transportation in Jerusalem.
Barak Hirshberg is an Associate Professor in the School of Chemistry at Tel Aviv University. He was previously a Rothschild postdoctoral fellow in the group of Prof. Michele Parrinello at ETH Zurich, and obtained his PhD as an Adams Fellow of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem under Prof. R. B. Gerber.
The Hirshberg Lab develops computer simulations to understand the dynamics of quantum and classical molecular condensed phases. A central focus is the development of path integral molecular dynamics methods for indistinguishable particles, with applications to quantum phase transitions and transport properties. Another key theme is enhanced sampling methods based on stochastic resetting, which accelerate the exploration of slow chemical transformations such as polymorphism in molecular crystals and conformational changes in biomolecules. Most recently the lab has applied statistical mechanics to improve the training and inference of machine-learning models.
His honors include the 2025 Israel Chemical Society Prize for Outstanding Young Scientist, the 2025 American Chemical Society COMP OpenEye/Cadence Molecular Sciences Outstanding Junior Faculty Award, the 2023 Journal of Chemical Physics Best Paper by an Emerging Investigator Award, and Tel Aviv University's Rector Excellence in Teaching Award.
Guy Ishai earned his PhD in economics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, advised by Professor Ori Heffetz, and holds a B.Sc. in physics completed within the Amirim Natural Sciences honors program. During his doctoral studies he was a fellow of the Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality and of the Barbara and Morton Mandel Program in the Humanities and Social Sciences. He joined MIT as both an MIT-Kalaniyot Fellow and a Rothschild Fellow.
His research lies in behavioral and experimental economics, and he is especially interested in developing tools to measure people's beliefs under uncertainty — beliefs central to individual decision-making and policy, such as what people expect next year's inflation to be, or what they think their chances of getting ill are. His doctoral research theoretically generalizes and characterizes a major class of methods that infer beliefs from people's incentivized betting choices, identifying what can be measured and what cannot given reasonable assumptions about betting behavior.
As a Postdoctoral Associate at the MIT Sloan School of Management, he plans to experimentally test and compare leading belief-measurement methods, including newly developed ones, and to extend this work to crowd-wisdom aggregation methods.
Shachar Jerushalmi completed his PhD in Plant Pathology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2026.
As a Kalaniyot Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell he works with Prof. Katie Gold in Plant Pathology and Plant-Microbe Biology at Cornell AgriTech in Geneva, studying the biological mechanisms underlying hyperspectral signatures in grapevine-pathogen interactions.
He is excited to join the Cornell AgriTech community, collaborate with colleagues and engage in new conversations and perspectives. Originally from central Israel, he enjoys spending time in nature and participating in communal activities, and looks forward to getting to know the area.
Dana Katsoty completed her PhD with honors in the Department of Psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where her doctoral research with Prof. Ariel Knafo-Noam examined mental health in the context of continuous trauma, focusing on predictive models and risk factors for psychopathology following the October 7th attack. She also earned her M.A. in Clinical and Educational Child Psychology with honors from the Hebrew University.
She was awarded the Allan Bronfman Prize for Excellence for her doctoral dissertation and received the Haruv Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship.
In 2025 she joined the laboratory of Prof. Yuval Neria in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University, where her research focuses on trauma, resilience and mental health across development, investigating how childhood adversity — including trauma exposure and economic hardship — affects mental health trajectories and brain development.
Ori Katz is a professor at the Institute of Applied Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
At Cornell he works with Professor Or Katz in the School of Applied and Engineering Physics as part of a team developing an advanced optical addressing system for studying trapped ions. Applying his expertise in light control and optical imaging, he is helping transition early-stage prototypes into a fully operational experimental setup with unique capabilities.
Beyond his work in the Katz group, he is exploring new collaborations with Cornell's engineering and applied physics faculty across fields such as spatiotemporal light shaping, electron microscopy and quantum entanglement.
Tamar Simhon Kravtzov earned her PhD in Physics with a dissertation centered on the "frozen star" model, a singularity-free alternative to traditional black holes.
Her current research seeks to test that model using gravitational waves, investigating whether gravitational-wave "echoes" could provide a distinctive observational signature separating frozen stars from standard black holes. The project also simulates extreme collisions between frozen stars to better understand how exotic internal matter behaves under immense pressure and radiates energy.
As a Kalaniyot Postdoctoral Fellow at Dartmouth College she collaborates with Dr. Robert Caldwell in Physics and Astronomy, working to translate theoretical predictions into observational targets that may guide future discoveries with the upcoming LISA space telescope mission.
Shai Levy received B.Sc. degrees in Materials Science and Engineering and in Chemistry, cum laude, from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, and continued to a direct-track PhD in Materials Science at the Technion, advised by Prof. Yehonadav Bekenstein, studying the optical and electronic properties of halide perovskite quantum dots and their collective behavior in ordered assemblies. His doctoral work was recognized with excellence scholarships from the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute, the Helen Diller Quantum Center and the Irwin and Joan Jacobs Graduate School, as well as the Rothschild Excellence Award and multiple outstanding teaching assistant awards.
His research sits at the intersection of materials science, chemistry and quantum photonics, with a focus on quantum dots as emerging platforms for optoelectronic and quantum technologies. Their nanometric size confines charge carriers, giving rise to discrete energy levels and size-dependent optical bandgaps and enabling remarkable control over light-matter interactions — properties explored for tunable light-emitting diodes and lasers, ultrafast photodetectors and high-energy scintillators. His work spans the chemical synthesis of colloidal nanomaterials, structural characterization using advanced diffraction and electron microscopy, and the investigation of optoelectronic behavior through spectroscopy and interferometry.
He joins the group of Prof. Moungi G. Bawendi in the MIT Department of Chemistry as an MIT-Kalaniyot Fellow in December 2026.
Gal Maor received his PhD in Computer Science from Tel Aviv University, advised by Professor Gil Cohen. He previously earned an M.Sc. in Computer Science from the Technion, advised by Professor Eli Ben-Sasson, and a double B.Sc. in Computer Science and Physics, also from the Technion. During his PhD he received several teaching and research awards, including the Sackler Award for Excellent PhD Student and the Rector's List Excellence in Teaching Award. Before returning to academia he worked as a software engineer and technical lead at Facebook and as a technical lead and research scientist at Diagnostic Robotics.
His research lies at the interface of mathematics and computer science, with a particular focus on spectral graph theory and free probability. He studies expander graphs — sparse networks that, despite having relatively few connections, allow information to spread efficiently — and their applications throughout theoretical computer science. A central theme in his work is that many graph constructions cannot be fully understood through a single expansion parameter such as the spectral gap; instead, their behavior is often governed by the full spectral distribution of the graph.
As an MIT-Kalaniyot Postdoctoral Fellow, he is jointly appointed in the Department of Mathematics and the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.
Oded Marck holds a B.A. in Middle East History and Labor Studies from Tel Aviv University, and an M.A. and PhD in Middle East Studies from Ben-Gurion University. His doctoral dissertation, "The Histadrut and the Palestinians in Israel, 1948–1953: Corporatism and Industrial Relations," examines the shaping of Zionist policies toward the Palestinian minority during Israel's formative years and the ways in which Palestinians reacted to, resisted and shaped those policies.
His research focuses on Israel's early years and on the place of Palestinian citizens within the state's emerging political and social order, with particular attention to labor and industrial relations. Centering on the processes that led the Histadrut to reverse its long-standing exclusion of Palestinian workers and permit their partial admission into its trade-union frameworks, and based on extensive Hebrew- and Arabic-language archival research, his work reinterprets Israel's early labor history as a field of negotiation and struggle in which Palestinian workers actively shaped policy and the emerging industrial relations system.
As an MIT-Kalaniyot Fellow and Postdoctoral Associate in MIT's History Section, he studies the history of the modern Middle East and Israel/Palestine, and has published related articles in leading journals in Middle East studies and labor history.
Odelia Melamed earned her B.Sc. in Mathematics and Computer Science from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and her M.Sc. and PhD from the Weizmann Institute of Science under the supervision of Prof. Adi Shamir, with doctoral research on the theoretical foundations of machine learning security and trustworthy AI.
Her doctoral work developed a geometric perspective on learning, showing how the interaction between data geometry, optimization dynamics and learned decision boundaries gives rise to phenomena such as adversarial vulnerability, transferability, explainability and machine unlearning. She established theoretical foundations for the geometric origins of adversarial examples, developed efficient attack and defense mechanisms, introduced a provable framework for machine unlearning, and designed methods for improving the faithfulness of gradient-based explanations.
As a postdoctoral fellow at the MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, working with Prof. Vinod Vaikuntanathan, she is extending this program toward a unified theory of learning and security, investigating how geometric structures induced during training govern broader trustworthy AI requirements including concept unlearning, model watermarking, privacy-preserving verification and certifiable guarantees of model behavior. In parallel she is committed to advancing the participation of women in STEM and expanding access to higher education for students from underrepresented and first-generation backgrounds.
Jonathan Morag earned his B.Sc. in physics from UC Davis and an M.Sc. in physics from the Technion, both summa cum laude. At the Technion he studied ion adsorption at silica surfaces in solution using atomic force microscopy with Prof. Uri Sivan. He completed his PhD in theoretical astrophysics at the Weizmann Institute with Prof. Eli Waxman, modeling the light emitted by exploding stars using numerical simulations; his models were later confirmed systematically against telescope observations and used to help elucidate the state of stars immediately prior to explosion.
As a postdoctoral fellow at MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics, he works at the interface of quantum computation, information theory and photonics. His main interests are quantum algorithms, thermodynamic limits of computation, the security of quantum communication protocols, and photonic computing on edge devices.
Across these subjects he pairs machine-checked formalization of mathematical proofs with photonic experiments.
Efrat Naaman completed her medical degree at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a five-year ophthalmology residency at Rambam Healthcare Campus in Haifa. Alongside her clinical training she built a substantial research career investigating the role of protein aggregation in retinal degeneration. Her work received Rambam's Atidim Prize, awarded to the highest-ranked residents to support their projects, as well as the Rothschild Fellowship supporting her proposed AAV-based gene therapy for age-related macular degeneration.
She is currently a postdoctoral fellow in Prof. Connie Cepko's laboratory at Harvard Medical School, where she contributes to the development of AAV-mediated gene therapies targeting shared pathways of retinal cell stress and degeneration. Her current work focuses on optimizing AAV delivery of NRF2, a key regulator of antioxidant responses, as a potential therapeutic approach for dry age-related macular degeneration, with the goal of protecting retinal cells and preserving vision. Prof. Cepko describes her expansion into molecular genetics as remarkable in both its speed and depth.
Alongside her medical and research training she has volunteered with organizations that promote human rights and support people from diverse backgrounds through major life transitions. Outside the lab, Efrat, her partner and their young son have spent the past year making Boston their home — exploring New England, hiking, bouldering and building connections in their local community.
Eden Eran Nagar completed her PhD in Biotechnology and Food Engineering at the Technion in Haifa in 2023.
As a Kalaniyot Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell she works with Prof. Elad Tako in Food Science, using advanced analytical and multi-omics approaches to explore how climate-resilient staple crops interact with the gut microbiome to improve nutrient absorption and address global malnutrition.
She is committed to cultivating a positive, inclusive academic environment and to building collaborative bridges between U.S. and Israeli scholars, and is excited to engage with the Cornell community, exchange ideas across disciplines and advance science that benefits both people and the global food system.
Eran Nevo is a Professor of Mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He holds a B.Sc. from the Technion and an M.Sc. and PhD from the Hebrew University, all in mathematics; his thesis, "Algebraic Shifting and f-Vector Theory," was completed under the supervision of Gil Kalai. After his PhD he was an H.C. Wang Assistant Professor at Cornell University for three years, then joined Ben-Gurion University as a senior lecturer before moving to the Hebrew University, where he became a full professor. He was most recently a research fellow at Harvard's Center of Mathematical Sciences and Applications, and his honors include the 2014 Erdős Prize in Mathematics.
His research is in combinatorics, with connections to commutative algebra, topology, geometry and convexity. Interactions between combinatorics and these fields have been fruitful in both directions, leading to results such as the g-theorem for simplicial polytopes and spheres, which is tightly connected to his own research on face numbers. Another example is framework rigidity, an area whose interest extends beyond mathematics to structural engineering and molecular biology.
As an MIT-Kalaniyot Sabbatical Scholar his research in rigidity theory focuses on new relations with these other areas and on applications to f-vector theory and the structure of the complexes in question.
Mor Nitzan is an Associate Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with joint affiliations at the School of Computer Science and Engineering, the Racah Institute of Physics and the Faculty of Medicine. She was previously a John Harvard Distinguished Science Fellow and James S. McDonnell Fellow at Harvard University, and obtained a B.Sc. in Physics and a PhD in Physics and Computational Biology at the Hebrew University as an Azrieli Sciences Fellow. Her honors include the EMBO Young Investigator Award, the Krill Award, the Azrieli Early Career Faculty Fellowship, the Alon Fellowship, the Google Research Scholar Award, the Samson Researcher Recruitment Award and an ERC Starting Grant.
Her research is at the interface of computer science, physics and biology, focusing on the representation, inference and design of multicellular systems. Her group develops mathematical models and computational frameworks that integrate machine learning, information theory and dynamical systems approaches to understand how cells encode multiple layers of spatial and temporal information, and how to efficiently decode that information from single-cell and spatial omics data.
The Nitzan Group aims to uncover the organizational principles underlying information processing, computation, division of labor and self-organization of multicellular structures such as tissues, and how cell-to-cell interactions can be manipulated to optimize tissue structure and function.
Shai Pilosof is a professor in the Department of Life Sciences at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
As a Visiting Scholar at the Dartmouth Kalaniyot Chapter, based in the Department of Mathematics, he is collaborating with Professor Peter Mucha on developing new predictive frameworks for ecological interaction networks such as host–parasite and plant–pollinator systems. Their work explores how diverse sources of ecological information — species traits, evolutionary history, environmental context and network structure — can be integrated using advanced statistical and network-based approaches, with a major focus on multi-modal predictive models capable of improving ecological prediction across systems.
The visit builds on a recently submitted U.S.–Israel BSF proposal and contributes to broader efforts at the intersection of ecology, network science and applied mathematics. Alongside his research collaboration he is participating in departmental activities and engaging with the wider Dartmouth community throughout his stay.
Ohad Shalom completed his PhD in Hydrogeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2025.
As a Kalaniyot Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell he works with Prof. Meredith Holgerson in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, studying hydrological connectivity and methane dynamics in pond-wetland systems.
He is excited to join the Cornell community, collaborate with colleagues and engage in new conversations and perspectives. Originally from Israel, he enjoys hiking, playing the harmonica and reading, and looks forward to exploring Ithaca.
Alon Shepon is a professor at the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History and the Department of Public Policy at Tel Aviv University.
His research focuses on sustainable food systems, agriculture, nutrition and environmental policy, examining the complex relationships between food production, human nutrition, environmental impacts and public policy with the goal of identifying pathways toward more sustainable and equitable food systems. By integrating environmental science, public policy and quantitative modeling, his work addresses pressing challenges at the intersection of food security, climate change and agricultural sustainability.
As a Visiting Scholar at the Dartmouth Kalaniyot Chapter, a central objective of his visit is to develop new collaborative research initiatives that connect expertise across disciplines and explore innovative approaches to sustainable agriculture and food-system transformation, building long-term partnerships between researchers at Dartmouth and institutions in Israel. Throughout his stay he is interacting with faculty and students through campus activities and informal discussions.
Saar Shoer earned her PhD in Computer Science from the Weizmann Institute of Science under the joint supervision of Prof. Eran Segal and Prof. Yitzhak Pilpel. In her doctoral research she applied data science and machine learning to study the genetic diversity of the human microbiota and its health implications, discovering 310 novel bacterial species and demonstrating that the level of genetic variability within species is linked to bacterial stress-response mechanisms. Her research has been published in Cell Reports Medicine, Cell Host & Microbe, Nature Communications and Nature Medicine, and presented at several international conferences.
She is also active in mentorship and education, having guided students and developed public tutorials on integrating artificial intelligence into scientific research. Her honors include the Weizmann Dean's Prize of Excellence for Outstanding PhD and the Russell Berrie Kalaniyot Postdoctoral Fellowship.
In her postdoctoral research in the Department of Systems Biology at Columbia University, advised by Prof. Tal Korem and Prof. Mohammed AlQuraishi, she studies the burgeoning global crisis of antimicrobial resistance using deep learning models.
Hagit Shoyhet is a biomedical engineering graduate specializing in tissue engineering, 3D disease modeling and extracellular vesicle-based therapeutic strategies.
She completed her PhD in Biomedical Engineering at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Prof. Shulamit Levenberg's laboratory, where her research focused on engineering functional human tissues to study and treat complex diseases. Her work included the development of engineered skeletal muscle platforms for type 2 diabetes therapy and 3D vascularized tumor models for studying cancer–microenvironment interactions.
As a Kalaniyot Fellow at Columbia University she will pursue postdoctoral research aimed at advancing patient-specific engineered tissue models and regenerative medicine approaches.
Lidor Spivak earned his PhD from Tel Aviv University's Sagol School of Neuroscience.
As a neuroscience postdoctoral researcher at the Zuckerman Institute at Columbia University, he focuses on how the cerebellum supports learning, timing and prediction.
To understand how cerebellar circuits implement these functions, he combines optogenetics and high-density electrophysiology in freely moving mice with computational analysis.
Jhonatan Tavori received his B.Sc. in Computer Science (summa cum laude) from The Open University in 2017, his M.Sc. in Computer Science (magna cum laude) from Tel Aviv University in 2020, and his PhD in Computer Science from Tel Aviv University in 2025, advised by Prof. Hanoch Levy. He was selected as valedictorian at both his B.Sc. and M.Sc. graduation ceremonies.
His research lies at the intersection of stochastic network analysis and security, with applications in edge-cloud systems, quantum networks and AI pipelines.
As a Kalaniyot Postdoctoral Fellow he works at the Wireless and Mobile Networking Lab at Columbia University with Prof. Gil Zussman. His awards and fellowships include the Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship, the Zuckerman STEM Leadership postdoctoral fellowship, the Blavatnik Prize for Outstanding Doctoral Fellows in Computer Science and the EU Horizon Next Generation Internet Transatlantic Fellowship.
Els Verbakel is a Belgian-born architect, urban designer, educator and researcher based in Israel. She is Head of the School of Architecture at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, holds the UNESCO Chair in Urban Design and Conservation Studies Jerusalem, and is co-founder of Derman Verbakel Architecture with Elie Derman. She holds a professional degree in Civil Engineering – Architecture from KU Leuven, a Master of Science in Architecture and Urban Design from Columbia University, and a PhD in Architecture from Princeton University.
Her research examines the spatial, political and civic dimensions of architecture and urbanism in contexts of conflict, emergency and territorial division. Her work focuses on how cities absorb conditions of instability and how architecture can move beyond technical problem-solving to become a medium for public life, collective resilience and critical imagination. She is interested in border cities, divided cities and urban archipelagos — including Jerusalem and Nicosia — where mobility, identity, governance and everyday life are shaped by spatial fragmentation, combining architectural history, urban analysis, design research, mapping and public-oriented discourse.
Her writings include "The Elastic City" in Harvard Design Magazine, "Enclave Urbanism: Jerusalem as an Urban Archipelago," and "Cities Across Nations" in Projections, published by MIT Press. At Bezalel she has led academic initiatives addressing research-based design, interdisciplinary education, diversity and the civic role of architecture, and has advanced public conversations on architecture's responsibility in moments of crisis through her recent work on shelter culture, emergency infrastructure and the future of collective protection.
Ron Carmel Vinestock completed her PhD at the Weizmann Institute of Science in the laboratory of Prof. Elazar Zelzer, where she studied the postnatal development and healing of the enthesis, the specialized tissue that connects tendon to bone. Her doctoral research uncovered non-linear differentiation programs underlying the spatially precise mineralization of the enthesis and identified Runx1 as a regulator of fibrocartilage differentiation. Her earlier work on neonatal enthesis healing revealed a non-inflammatory repair process involving extracellular matrix secretion by resident cells and the formation of an acellular scar.
This work sparked a broader interest in tissue-level biology and in the principles that govern how tissues develop, are maintained and respond to injury. As a Dorot Fellow and postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School in the laboratory of Dr. Ruth Franklin, she is extending that perspective into lung biology and immunology.
Her postdoctoral research investigates how immune-derived signals regulate lung repair and fibrosis. It focuses on oncostatin M (OSM), a cytokine produced by macrophages that supports epithelial repair after acute lung injury but has also been associated with fibrotic remodeling. By examining OSM signaling across acute and chronic lung injury, she aims to understand how interactions between macrophages, epithelial cells and fibroblasts shape the balance between regenerative repair and fibrosis.
Shmuel Wechsler, MD, completed his Medical Fellowship at Harvard Medical School and Mass Eye and Ear in 2026.
Mentored by Dr. Felipe Santos, he completed a month-long clinical observership in the Division of Neurotology at Mass Eye and Ear. During his fellowship he was exposed to one of the most advanced neurotology environments in the world, learning from clinicians and researchers who are leaders in their field and observing how clinical excellence, surgical innovation, research and mentorship come together in daily practice.
Welcomed warmly as a physician from Israel, he found the faculty and staff generous with their time, patient in their teaching and sincerely committed to helping him expand his clinical and academic perspective. The experience exposed him to clinical and research approaches he would not have encountered otherwise, and he took part in an ongoing research project. Upon returning to Israel, he harnessed these lessons to contribute to the advancement of medicine and science at home.