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March 17, 2016
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Date:09TuesdayDecember 2025Lecture
Special Seminar -The Clore Center for Biological Physics
More information Time 13:15 - 14:30Title Nonreciprocal phases of matterLocation Nella and Leon Benoziyo Physics LibraryLecturer Dr. Yael Avni
Lunch at 12:45Abstract Show full text abstract about Nonreciprocal interactions in which the influence of A on B ...» Nonreciprocal interactions in which the influence of A on B differs from that of B on A are abundant in physical, chemical, biological, and ecological systems, and are known to give rise to oscillatory states. Yet, it remains unclear whether these states represent true phases of matter: Can they maintain long-range order in spatially extended, noisy environments in the thermodynamic limit? And what kinds of phase transitions do they exhibit? To address these questions, we introduce a minimal generalization of the Ising model with two species having opposing goals. We demonstrate that oscillatory phases are stable in three dimensions but not in two, and that nonreciprocity changes the critical exponents from those of the Ising model to those of the XY model. We further extend this framework to a nonreciprocal XY model and develop a Harris-like criterion that determines when nonreciprocity fundamentally alters universal behavior. Finally, we apply these insights to a recent model of biomolecular condensates, predicting exotic dynamical phases and suggesting experimental tests. -
Date:10WednesdayDecember 2025Lecture
Developmental Club Series 2025-26
More information Time 10:00 - 11:00Title Evolution and Design concepts of sexually dimorphic circuitsLocation Arthur and Rochelle Belfer Building for Biomedical Research
Botnar auditoriumLecturer Dr. Meital Oren -
Date:10WednesdayDecember 2025Lecture
"Are halide perovskites corrosive materials?"
More information Time 11:00 - 12:00Location Perlman
404Lecturer Prof. Davide Raffaele Ceratti Organizer Department of Molecular Chemistry and Materials ScienceAbstract Show full text abstract about perovskites are among the most promising materials for next-...» perovskites are among the most promising materials for next-generation solar cells, offering exceptionalefficiency gains and driving major investment in large-scale production. Yet, as the technology moves toward realworlddeployment, corrosion has emerged as a critical but often overlooked challenge. It arises not only fromenvironmental exposure but also from the intrinsic reactivity of the perovskite itself, which can attack metalelectrodes such as gold through complex chemical pathways.This show highlights why corrosion in perovskite devices is both subtle and important. Light and heat can triggerchemical changes that produce reactive species, either directly corroding metals or transforming the perovskite intoa more aggressive state. By connecting principles from corrosion science and semiconductor physics, we revealhow these reactions originate and what must be done to control them at their source. -
Date:11ThursdayDecember 2025Lecture
PhD Thesis Defense by Nadav Goldberg
More information Time 09:00 - 10:00Location Arthur and Rochelle Belfer Building for Biomedical Research
KoshlandLecturer Nadav Goldberg -
Date:11ThursdayDecember 2025Lecture
Demonstration & Training SEMINAR: ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES FOR EXTRACELLULAR VESICLE RESEARCH
More information Time 09:30 - 12:00Location Benozio Building, 2nd floor
seminar roomOrganizer Department of Life Sciences Core FacilitiesContact Abstract Show full text abstract about Dear colleagues,Attached is the flyer for our Demonstration ...» Dear colleagues,Attached is the flyer for our Demonstration & Training Seminar: Advanced NEW Technologies for Extracellular Vesicle Research, taking place on December 11th, 2025, Benozio Building, 2nd floor.The session will feature two new platforms at WIS:ZetaView Nanoparticle Analyzer (now available at WIS) – particle concentration, size measurements, zeta potential and fluorescence-based phenotyping.Exodus Bio automated EV-isolation systems – high-purity, reproducible EV isolation with minimal hands-on time.You are welcome to join onsite or online:https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86837215413?pwd=iRTFVP4C2ykvJspMsZ8b2cJj8r5oJl.1Looking forward to seeing you there,Avi -
Date:11ThursdayDecember 2025Colloquia
Physics Colloquium
More information Time 11:15 - 12:30Title Quantum Vortices of PhotonsLocation Weissman AuditoriumLecturer Prof. Ofer Firstenberg Abstract Show full text abstract about In optics, vortices appear as phase twists of the electromag...» In optics, vortices appear as phase twists of the electromagnetic field, traditionally arising from interactions between light and matter. Our lab investigates an extreme regime of optical nonlinearity in which quantum vortices arise from strong, effective interactions between individual photons. We observe extended phase singularities in the few-photon wavefunction, including vortex lines and rings, and explore their symmetry and topology. The vortex rings become warped by the underlying dispersion, and the enclosed phase flip provides a resource for deterministic quantum logic. In recent experiments moving beyond co-propagating geometries, we find that counter-propagating photons exhibit longer-range and richer vortex interactions, opening new avenues for quantum nonlinear optics. -
Date:11ThursdayDecember 2025Lecture
NitroNet – a machine learning model for the prediction of tropospheric NO2 profiles from TROPOMI observations
More information Time 11:30 - 12:30Location Stone Administration BuildingLecturer Leon Kuhn Organizer Department of Earth and Planetary SciencesAbstract Show full text abstract about Satellite instruments, such as TROPOMI, are routinelyused to...» Satellite instruments, such as TROPOMI, are routinelyused to quantify tropospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO2)based on its narrowband light absorption in the UV/visible spectral range. The key limitation of suchretrievals is that they can only return the „verticalcolumn density“ (VCD), defined as the integral of theNO2 concentration profile. The profile itself, whichdescribes the vertical distribution of NO2, remainsunknown.This presentation showcases „NitroNet“, the first NO2profile retrieval for TROPOMI. NitroNet is a neuralnetwork, which was trained on synthetic NO2 profilesfrom the regional chemistry and transport model WRFChem,operated on a European domain for the month ofMay 2019. The neural network receives NO2 VCDs fromTROPOMI alongside ancillary variables (meteorology,emission data, etc.) as input, from which it estimates NO2concentration profiles.The talk covers:• an introduction to satellite remote sensing of NO2.• the theoretical underpinnings of NitroNet, how themodel was trained, and how it was validated.• practical new applications that NitroNet enables. -
Date:11ThursdayDecember 2025Lecture
Vision and AI
More information Time 12:15 - 13:15Title Who Said Neural Networks Aren't Linear?Location Jacob Ziskind Building
Lecture Hall - Room 1 - אולם הרצאות חדר 1Lecturer Assaf Shocher
TechnionOrganizer Department of Computer Science and Applied MathematicsContact Abstract Show full text abstract about NeNeural networks are famously nonlinear. However, linearity...» NeNeural networks are famously nonlinear. However, linearity is defined relative to a pair of vector spaces, f:X→Y. Is it possible to identify a pair of non-standard vector spaces for which a conventionally nonlinear function is, in fact, linear? This paper introduces a method that makes such vector spaces explicit by construction. We find that if we sandwich a linear operator between two invertible neural networks, then the corresponding vector spaces are induced by newly defined operations. This framework makes the entire arsenal of linear algebra applicable to nonlinear mappings. We demonstrate this by collapsing diffusion model sampling into a single step, enforcing global idempotency for projective generative models, and enabling modular style transfer.
Bio:
Assaf is an Assistant Professor at the Technion in the Faculty of Data and Decision Sciences. Previously, he was a Research Scientist at NVIDIA, a Postdoc at UC Berkeley with Alyosha Efros, and a Visiting Scholar at Google DeepMind. I received my PhD from the Weizmann Institute of Science, advised by Michal Irani. I have two Bachelor degrees from Ben-Gurion University in Physics and Electrical-Engineering. Assaf’s research focuses on Deep Neural Networks for computer vision, guided by two core principles: a pursuit of elegant, foundational ideas that offer fundamentally new perspectives, and a focus on dynamic and adaptive learning for real-world scenarios like unannotated data streams and distribution shifts. -
Date:11ThursdayDecember 2025Lecture
Geometric Functional Analysis and Probability Seminar
More information Time 13:30 - 14:30Title Generalized Hodge theory for geometric boundary-value problemsLocation Jacob Ziskind Building
Room 155 - חדר 155Lecturer Roee Leder
HUJIOrganizer Faculty of Mathematics and Computer ScienceContact Abstract Show full text abstract about A fundamental theorem states that a two-dimensional Riemanni...» A fundamental theorem states that a two-dimensional Riemannian manifold with boundary, equipped with a symmetric tensor field, is locally isometrically embedded in Euclidean space if and only if the symmetric tensor field satisfies the Gauss-Mainardi-Codazzi equations—in which case, the tensor field is the second fundamental form.
When the intrinsic metric is Euclidean, it is a classical result that such tensor fields are Hessians of functions satisfying the Monge-Ampère equation. I shall present a version of this result to arbitrary Riemannian metrics, using a generalized Hodge theory I developed for a broader class of geometric boundary-value problems. I will discuss this theory, its main features, and perhaps give a glimpse of more complicated examples it addresses. -
Date:11ThursdayDecember 2025Lecture
Lung cancer – advances in recent years and the role of B-cells in immune response
More information Time 14:00 - 15:00Location Candiotty
AuditoriumLecturer Prof. Jair Bar Organizer Dwek Institute for Cancer Therapy Research -
Date:14SundayDecember 2025Lecture
The Clore Center for Biological Physics
More information Time 13:15 - 14:30Title Self-organized hyperuniformity in population dynamicsLocation Nella and Leon Benoziyo Physics LibraryLecturer Dr. Tal Agranov
Lunch at 12:45Contact Abstract Show full text abstract about Living systems often operate at critical states – poised on ...» Living systems often operate at critical states – poised on the border between two distinct dynamical behaviours, where unique functionality emerges [1]. A striking example is the ear’s sensory hair cells, which amplify faint sounds by operating on the verge of spontaneous oscillations [2]. How such finely tuned states are maintained, and what statistical signatures characterise them, remain major open questions.In this talk, I will present a generic mechanism for critical tuning in population dynamics [3]. In our model, the consumption of a shared resource drives the population towards a critical steady state characterised by prolonged individual lifetimes. Remarkably, we find that in its spatially extended form, the model exhibits hyperuniform density correlations. In contrast to previously studied hyperuniform systems, our model lacks conservation laws even arbitrarily close to criticality. Through explicit coarse-graining, we derive a hydrodynamic theory that clarifies the underlying mechanism for this striking statistical behaviour. I will highlight several biological contexts in which this mechanism is expected to operate, including biomolecular complex assembly in the developing C. elegans embryo. Here, together with experimental collaborators, we identify signatures of critical tuning that may arise from resource competition.More broadly, our framework motivates future work on how living systems harness resource-mediated interactions to regulate their dynamical states.[1] T. Mora, W. Bialek, J Stat Phys (2011)[2] S. Camalet, T. Duke, F. Jülicher and J. Prost, PNAS (1999)[3] T Agranov, N. Wiegenfeld,O. Karin and B. D. Simons arXiv:2509.08077 (2025)FOR THE LATEST UPDATES AND CONTENT ON SOFT MATTER AND BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS AT THE WEIZMANN, VISIT OUR WEBSITE: https://www.bio -
Date:14SundayDecember 202515MondayDecember 2025Conference
Symposium in honor of Rafi Malach - The Mind's Eye: A Quest from Vision to Consciousness
More information Time 14:00 - 19:00Title Symposium in honor of Rafi Malach - The Mind's Eye: A Quest from Vision to ConsciousnessLocation The David Lopatie Conference CentreChairperson Michal RamotHomepage Contact -
Date:16TuesdayDecember 2025Lecture
Recent Advances in Understanding Arenaviral Cell Entry and Immune Recognition
More information Time 11:15 - 12:15Location Gerhard M.J. Schmidt Lecture HallLecturer Prof. Ron Diskin Organizer Department of Chemical and Structural Biology -
Date:16TuesdayDecember 2025Lecture
Mathematics Colloquium
More information Time 11:15 - 12:30Title A perspective on Stationary Gaussian processesLocation Jacob Ziskind Building
Room 1 - 1 חדרLecturer Naomi Feldheim
Bar Ilan UniversityOrganizer Department of Computer Science and Applied MathematicsContact Abstract Show full text abstract about Real stochastic processes are random real-valued functions o...» Real stochastic processes are random real-valued functions on an underlying space (in this talk, Z^d or R^d). Gaussianity occurs when a process is obtained as a sum of many infinitesimal independent contributions, and stationarity occurs when the phenomenon in question is invariant under translations in time or in space. This makes stationary Gaussian processes (SGPs) an excellent model for noise and random signals, placing them amongst the most well studied stochastic processes.
Persistence of a stochastic process is the event of remaining above a fixed level on a large ball of radius T. For a Stationary Gaussian process, we ask two basic questions:
1. What is the asymptotic behavior of the persistence probability, as T grows?
2. Conditioned on the persistence event, what is the typical shape of the process (if there is one)?
These questions, posed by physicists and applied mathematicians decades ago, have been successfully addressed only in the last few years, by exploiting strong relations with harmonic analysis.
In this talk, we will describe old and new results, the main tools and ideas used to achieve them, and many open questions that remain. -
Date:18ThursdayDecember 2025Colloquia
Physics Colloquium
More information Time 11:15 - 12:30Title The quest for the Nonlinear Breit-Wheeler Pair Production MeasurementLocation Weissman AuditoriumLecturer Dr. Noam Tal-Hod Organizer Department of Physics of Complex SystemsContact Abstract Show full text abstract about The nonlinear Breit-Wheeler process — electron-positron pair...» The nonlinear Breit-Wheeler process — electron-positron pair creation from high-energy photons in an intense electromagnetic field — is one of the most fundamental yet experimentally elusive predictions of strong-field quantum electrodynamics. Reaching the regime where this process becomes measurable requires not only extreme light-matter interaction conditions, but also detecting technologies capable of resolving rare signatures amid complex backgrounds. Beyond its intrinsic importance for testing quantum electrodynamics in the strongest fields accessible on Earth, this process is also relevant for understanding environments such as magnetars, where similarly intense fields and abundant pair production naturally occur. I will present the ongoing international effort to realize a definitive measurement of the process and highlight how advanced particle-tracking methods, commonly used in High-Energy Physics experiments, are contributing to this goal. I will discuss the running E320 experiment at SLAC, where our tracking detector is used to characterize collisions of 10 GeV electrons and 10 TW laser pulses in unprecedented detail, and give an outlook on the upcoming LUXE experiment at DESY, which aims to operate at the intensity frontier. I will also describe new opportunities at high-power multi-PW laser facilities — including our recent all-laser campaigns at ELI-NP and APOLLON — that open complementary routes to probe strong-field physics in complementary parameter spaces. Together, these efforts bring accelerator-based, laser-based and particle physics approaches closer to a definitive measurement of the nonlinear Breit-Wheeler process. -
Date:18ThursdayDecember 2025Lecture
Vision and AI
More information Time 12:15 - 13:15Title Bridging Generative Models and Physical Priors for 3D ReconstructionLocation Jacob Ziskind Building
Lecture Hall - Room 1 - אולם הרצאות חדר 1Lecturer Dor Verbin
Google DeepMindOrganizer Department of Computer Science and Applied MathematicsContact Abstract Show full text abstract about Recent years have brought remarkable progress in 3D vision p...» Recent years have brought remarkable progress in 3D vision problems like view synthesis and inverse rendering. Despite these advancements, substantial challenges remain in material and lighting decomposition, geometry estimation, and view synthesis—particularly when handling a wide range of materials. In this talk, I will outline a few of these problems and present solutions that combine the principled structure and efficiency of physics-based rendering with the strong priors encoded in generative image and video models.
Bio:
Dor Verbin is a research scientist at Google DeepMind in San Francisco, where he works on computer vision, computer graphics, and machine learning. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from Harvard University. Previously, he received a double B.Sc. in physics and in electrical engineering from Tel Aviv University, after which he worked as a researcher at Camerai, developing real-time computer vision algorithms for mobile devices. He received the Best Student Paper Honorable Mention award at CVPR 2022. -
Date:18ThursdayDecember 2025Lecture
Geometric Functional Analysis and Probability Seminar
More information Time 13:30 - 14:30Title Metric smoothnessLocation Jacob Ziskind Building
Room 155 - חדר 155Lecturer Assaf Naor
PrincetonOrganizer Department of Computer Science and Applied MathematicsContact Abstract Show full text abstract about A foremost longstanding open problem in the Ribe program is ...» A foremost longstanding open problem in the Ribe program is to find a purely metric reformulation of the Banach space property of having an equivalent norm whose modulus of uniform smoothness has a given power type. In this talk we will present a solution of this problem. All of the relevant background and concepts will be explained, and no prerequisites will be assumed beyond rudimentary undergraduate functional analysis and probability. Based on joint work with Alexandros Eskenazis. -
Date:21SundayDecember 202522MondayDecember 2025Academic Events
Hanukkah STAR - workshop 2025
More information Time All dayLocation Jacob Ziskind Building
Room 1Homepage -
Date:22MondayDecember 2025Lecture
Seminar for PhD thesis Defense by Yahel Cohen
More information Time 11:00 - 12:00Title “miRNA isoforms as biomarkers for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis prognosis”Location Benoziyo Biochemistry auditorium room 191c-new -
Date:22MondayDecember 2025Lecture
Foundations of Computer Science Seminar
More information Time 11:15 - 12:15Title Corners and Communication ComplexityLocation Jacob Ziskind Building
Lecture Hall - Room 1 - אולם הרצאות חדר 1Lecturer Shachar Lovett
UCSDOrganizer Department of Computer Science and Applied MathematicsContact Abstract Show full text abstract about The corners problem is a classical problem in additive combi...» The corners problem is a classical problem in additive combinatorics. A corner is a triple of points (x,y), (x+d,y), (x,y+d). It can be viewed as a 2-dimensional analog of a (one-dimensional) 3-term arithmetic progression. An old question of Ajtai and Szemeredi is: how many points can there be in the n x n integer grid without containing a corner? They proved a qualitative bound of o(n^2), but no effective quantitative bounds.
This question has an equivalent description in the language of communication complexity. Given 3 players with inputs x,y,z which are integers in the range 1 to n, what is the most efficient Number-On-Forehead (NOF) deterministic protocol to check if they sum to n. This connection was first observed in the seminal paper of Chandra, Furst and Lipton that introduced the NOF model back in 1983.
In the language of communication complexity, the trivial protocol sends log(n) bits, but there is a better NOF protocol (based on constructions in additive combinatorics) which only sends (log n)^{1/2} bits. However, the best lower bound until our work was double exponentially far off - of the order of log log log n. In this work, we close this gap, and prove a lower bound of (log n)^c for some absolute constant c.
The work is based on combining the high-level approach of Shkredov, who obtained the previous lower bound, which was based on Fourier analysis; with the recent breakthrough of Kelley and Meka on the 3-term arithmetic progression problem, and the ensuing developments. The main message is that "spreadness" based techniques (a notion that I will explain in the talk) give significantly better quantitative bounds compared to classical Fourier analysis.
Joint work with Michael Jaber, Yang P. Liu, Anthony Ostuni and Mehtaab Sawhney
Paper will appear in FOCS 2025
https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.07006