Dr. Edvardas Narevicius

Born in Vilnius, Lithuania, in 1973, Dr. Narevicius began his career in science by winning the first place in two all-Soviet Union Chemistry Olympiads for high school students, in 1989 and 1990. He then immigrated to Israel and did his undergraduate and graduate studies at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, earning a BSc summa cum laude in chemistry in 1995 and a PhD, also in chemistry, in 2002. During his PhD studies, he served for three years in the Israel Defense Forces. From 2000 to 2005, he worked as a senior scientist for OpTun Inc., an optical telecommunications company, where he invented and patented an optical switching device that became the building block of many different functionality devices. From 2005 to 2008, he worked and studied as a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Nonlinear Dynamics at the University of Texas at Austin. He joined the Weizmann Institute faculty as a senior scientist in 2008.
Dr. Narevicius designs experimental methods for slowing down and cooling molecules to explore fundamental questions in chemistry and physics. He investigates chemical reactions at temperatures several fractions of a degree above absolute zero, when quantum effects become dominant. This new and challenging approach, known as “cold chemistry,” makes it possible to control chemical reactions by applying electric and magnetic fields in order to reveal phenomena that cannot be studied when reactions occur at a regular speed and temperature. Cold chemistry can also help to answer various questions in astrophysics; for example, it can help clarify how complex molecules are created in the extreme cold of outer space.
Dr. Narevicius received the Weizmann Institute’s Scientific Council Prize in Chemistry in 2014 and the the Israel Chemical Society (ICS) Excellent Young Scientist Prize in 2014.
He  is married to Yulia, an electrical engineer who works in his lab, and the couple have two sons: Yoav (2004) and Idan (2007). His hobbies include martial arts (kung fu) and playing the piano.