Letters & Articles
Dear members of the Weizmann community,
Every year, we light the Hanukah candles and remember the story of overcoming an enemy and turning darkness into light. This year, the holiday holds more meaning than ever in Israel. These have been difficult days, and so in the spirit of hope and progress I wish you a Happy Hanukah. And to those who celebrate Christmas: Merry Christmas! Happy New Year 2024 to all.
I am also taking the opportunity to wish our new and returning students a good start to the new academic year at the Feinberg Graduate School, which begins December 11. We are happy to see that international students and postdoctoral fellows have started returning to Israel, and we look forward to many more. The influx is already having a positive impact on our labs, which greatly depend on this incredible talent to propel our research forward.
Our scientific research is moving ahead to the greatest extent possible. At the same time, we are learning to live side by side with the challenge and anguish of the war and the loss of life, and are buoyed by the perseverance and the morale of the Israel Defense Forces. The devastation of October 7 stays with us, and our campus community continues to mourn the loss of relatives and loved ones of a number of our students and employees. Our deepest sympathy is with them.
Volunteer efforts
Members of our community have rolled up their sleeves to assist farmers in need of work hands, have been helping in advocacy work in describing the war to global audiences, and have been collecting donations for equipment and other needs for those who have been displaced from their homes. In addition, our Levinson Visitors Center has been hosting tours of the Institute and the Weizmann House for displaced individuals and families, and the Davidson Institute has been offering science programming for displaced families. The Weizmann House team is offering activities for children and families in Rehovot, and we will soon set off for the hotels in which the evacuees are staying to offer scientific talks.
Among the grassroots volunteer efforts is one spearheaded by Weizmann scientists that now encompasses Israeli academics around the world. The group of 80-plus academics in the sciences and humanities is focused on advocating for understanding of the Hamas terror attack and the ongoing war in Gaza, through writing petitions and open letters to academic associations and publications, and responses to several boycott attempts of Israeli academia. This is a commendable effort.
It goes without saying that the effort to bring back Israel’s hostages in Gaza is top of mind for everyone. At the Institute, we are using the concept of the time it takes to grow seedlings into plants to showcase how long the abductees have been in captivity. On our website, seedlings planted by Prof. Avi Levy it the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences are being displayed alongside a clock indicating the length of time the hostages have been held. We hope that this project, called “The Wheat Grows Again”—named for a Hebrew song written after the Yom Kippur War—will contribute to the larger effort to bring them all home.
A special thank you
Before I move on to science news, I want to take this opportunity to express my great thanks to Prof. Alon Harmelin, Vice President for Administration and Finance, who is stepping down from that role on January 1 after four years of outstanding service. I want to thank Alon for his dedication and hard work in this important realm, which is relevant to each and every one of us on campus, and for his friendship and personal touch. Alon Weingarten, Head of the Construction and Engineering Division, who in that role successfully oversaw major building and planning projects over many years, will begin in his new role as Vice President for Administration. Also joining the management team is Tamir Kadishi, in an expanded role as Chief Financial Officer. I wish them both success in their new positions.
Science lights the way forward
At the end of November, Prof. Emeritus Reshef Tenne, of the Department of Molecular Chemistry and Materials Science, received the prestigious Von Hippel Award, the highest honor given by the Materials Research Society. The award recognizes Reshef for his research on nanotube- and fullerene-like structures from inorganic layered compounds, which dramatically advance the field of nanomaterials, with implications for everyday life.
We typically bestow the Helen and Martin Kimmel Award for Innovative Investigation and the André Deloro for Scientific Excellence at the Annual General Meeting of our International Board, which wasn’t held this year. But the winners still won of course—and I would like to congratulate them. The 2023 Kimmel Award is going to Prof. Shalev Itzkovitz of the Department of Molecular Cell Biology for his research involving the mapping of cell populations within complex tissues, and the impact of tissue structure on physiological function. This work has enabled him and his lab team to identify previously unrecognized cell types and demonstrate how inter-cellular communication plays a key role in health and disease.
The 2023 Deloro Prize is going to Prof. Itay Halevy of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, for his research on the evolving chemical composition of our planet’s oceans and atmosphere and its influence on the global climate. He and his lab have also developed powerful techniques for tracing this evolutionary dynamic through the geological record.
Dr. Alexander Poddubny of the Department of Physics of Complex Systems has received the 2023 Sir Charles Clore Prize for Outstanding Senior Scientist. Alexander studies atom-photon interactions, which has major implications for the rapidly expanding field of quantum computing.
Mazal tov to Reshef, Shalev, Itay, and Alexander!
Among the business-as-usual aspects of life on campus despite the war is the arrival of outstanding new scientists. Dr. Nadav Ehrenfeld of the Department of Science Teaching arrived in September, and his focus is the teaching and learning of math as well as professional development for math teachers.On January 1, Dr. Mark Sheinin will join the Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics. His research goal is to invent computational imaging systems that enable computer vision capabilities beyond the capabilities of human vision and perception. I want to wish a hearty welcome to Nadav and Mark.
And now on to some exciting research news. Prof. Kobi Abramson and his group from the Department of Immunology and Biological Regeneration revealed a new autoimmune disorder in children that affects the development of tooth enamel, the hardest substance in our body protecting our teeth. The disorder is common among patients with the rare genetic syndrome called APS-1, but also among children with celiac disease. Understanding this disorder may help celiac patients as well as many others who suffer from impaired tooth enamel development due to unknown causes. The new finding is expected to enable early detection of the disease, and pave the way to prevention.
A joint study by Nobel laureate Prof. Ada Yonath, of the Department of Chemical and Structural Biology, and Prof. Shulamit Michaeli from Bar-Ilan University, presents a precise way to attack the trypanosome parasite that causes the disease known as sleeping sickness and which is transmitted by the tsetse fly. The new approach attacks the parasite through its ribosome and prevents it from producing essential proteins. The findings are a basis for the potential development of a cure for sleeping sickness, which causes 40,000 deaths in Africa annually, as well as for the development of drugs against related parasites, including leishmaniasis.
I’d like to end by circling to where we started: the promise of light. A new study in the lab of Prof. Dan Yakir, in the Department of Earth and Planetary Science, explored the question of whether planting more forests or erecting more photovoltaic fields (PVs, or solar panels) would better reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and thus mitigate the effects of climate change. Both also increase global heat load because they make the land surface darker, which absorbs heat, so factors that offset this absorption had to be taken into account. The Yakir lab found that in arid areas, solar panels are 50 times more effective than planting forests in terms of the potential for mitigating climate change, while in humid areas forestation becomes the more effective approach with increasing humidity, and also provides ecological benefits such as maintain biodiversity.
With all best wishes for quieter days, and happy holidays to all.
Prof. Alon Chen