Current Fellows

Dr. Andrey Vulfovich was awarded a Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship to pursue his project titled “Physics-Informed Neural Networks and Multi-Objective Optimization for Modelling and Design of Wireless Power Transfer Systems” at The University of Texas at Austin, under the guidance of Prof. Alex J. Hanson. The project will develop fast, accurate, physics-informed modelling and optimization methods for inductive wireless power transfer systems, aiming to reduce reliance on computationally intensive finite-element simulations and accelerate the design of efficient, misalignment-tolerant wireless charging solutions for electric vehicles, drones, robotics, and other electrified systems.

Andrey completed his MSc and PhD in electrical and computer engineering at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, under the supervision of Professor Alon Kuperman. His doctoral research focused on the design and optimization of practical inductive wireless power transfer systems under sub-resonant frequency control. He has published extensively in high tier journals in power electronics and energy conversion, received multiple academic awards including the Rector’s Award and Dean’s Award at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, IEEE Industrial Electronics Society student and young professionals recognition, and two Best Journal Paper Awards from the Israeli Smart Transportation Research Center. He has also contributed to several patents and industry-collaborative projects related to wireless power transfer.

Avia Liberman is an economist committed to advancing peacebuilding and economic development through evidence-based policymaking. He graduated with distinction from the Hebrew University’s PPE Honors Program and received multiple academic awards. As a student, Avia founded Itutim, Israel’s first academic journal dedicated to philosophy, politics, and economics, and served as a team leader in the “Social Economists” Fellowship.

Avia was awarded the Fulbright fellowship to pursue a master’s in public policy at Yale University’s Jackson School.

Prior to receiving the fellowship, Avia worked as a researcher at the Tachlith Institute, where he identified market failures and structural imbalances in the state budget and developed policy reforms in collaboration with senior decision-makers. At the Israeli Ministry of Finance, he served in the chief economist’s division on the economics and national security team. He also interned with the OECD’s economics department, contributing to the 2025 economic survey of Israel, and held roles as both a teaching and research assistant in the Hebrew University’s economics department. His academic research has focused on nationalism and post-conflict development.
 

Dr. Aviya Fraenkel was awarded a Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship to pursue her research project titled "The Literary Palaces of Ancient Sumerian Rulers ‒ Unity of Idea and Form". Her project will explore the structural and poetic characteristics of the royal praise hymns of the kings of the Sumerian dynasty, and the political ideology they serve, focusing on Kings Shulgi and Ur-Namma, the founders of the Third Dynasty of Ur (Ur III).

Aviya received a BA in biblical studies and archaeology, an MA in biblical studies and Semitic languages and a PhD in biblical studies and Assyriology from Bar-Ilan University. Her PhD was devoted to editing the Sumerian composition 'Šulgi C', a self-laudatory royal hymn from the 21st century BCE, which she is preparing for publication.

Her recent presentations:

“From the Cattle Pen to the Horned Starry Sky ‒ Everyday Life of a Royal Metaphor”, in: ““Kings Born to Be Wild”: Current Research on Sumerian Royal Panegyrics” (workshop), the 70th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, (11.07.25, University of Prague).

“The Literary Palaces of Šulgi ‒ Unity of Idea and Form”, in: The 26th Annual Conference of the Israel Society for Assyriology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, (10.02.2025, University of Haifa).

“Mu BÀD.AN.KI ba-hul ‘The year Dēr was destroyed’: Šulgi’s 21^st regnal year”, in the 69th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, (12.07.24, University of Helsinki).

Awad graduated from Achva Academic College with a B.A. in multidisciplinary studies in the humanities and social sciences, along with a teaching certificate in English. He currently teaches 3rd and 4th grades at Abu Obeida Elementary School in Rahat.

As a member of the Bedouin community in the Negev, Awad is committed to using his skills in education to empower and support his community. He finds deep meaning in helping students overcome language barriers and discover the joy of learning. Despite the challenges, he is constantly inspired by his students’ growth and enthusiasm.

Beyond the classroom, Awad volunteers by leading spoken English sessions for young people seeking to improve their communication skills for work, travel, and personal growth. His dedication to education and community advancement has shaped his journey as both a teacher and a mentor.

In 2025, Awad will serve as a Fulbright foreign language teaching assistant, where he looks forward to sharing the Arabic language and culture while promoting cross-cultural understanding.

Ben Molina is an Israeli animator, curator, and cultural organizer. He holds a Bachelor of Design  in visual communication from Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art, graduating Cum Laude. Before receiving the Fulbright award, Ben served as director of the Animation Guild Israel. He currently serves as artistic director of the ANIMIX Festival, Israel’s leading animation and comics festival. He teaches animation at Shenkar College and Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts and has served as a film evaluator for the Gesher, Makor, and Rabinovich Film Funds.

Ben’s work focuses on connecting artistic expression with community building and cultural exchange. His upcoming Master of Fine Arts (MFA) studies in computer arts at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York will focus on strengthening the global presence of Israeli animation and exploring new visual storytelling forms.

He has curated international screenings, produced animated shorts, and initiated collaborations between Israeli and international creators – including the first animation event in Rahat, aimed at bridging cultural divides through art. His film Half a Saba was screened at numerous festivals and received several awards worldwide. His work has been exhibited at the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, the Edmond de Rothschild Center, and venues across Israel.

Boaz Garfinkel was awarded a Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship to pursue his research project titled "The Political Economy of Distribution: Employment, Housing and Class Formation in Early Israel". His project examines how the distribution of housing and employment in Israel’s first decade shaped emerging class relations, social inequality, and the political economy of the new state.

Boaz received his BA and MA in Jewish History from the University of Haifa and his PhD in Israeli History from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. His doctoral dissertation, "Class Formation and Housing in Israel", examined housing distribution in Israel during the 1950s and its role in the formation of social and economic inequality. His research lies at the intersection of economic history, labor history, social thought, and Israeli society.

His publications include:

• "Military Strikebreaking and the Making of State–Labor Relations in Early Israel", Labor History, 2025.
• "The Dissolution of the Cooperative Housing of the General Histadrut", Cathedra, 2026.
• "Bringing in the Army to Break the Locomotive Drivers’ and Sailors’ Strikes in 1951", Iyunim, 2020.

Deborah Fischer’s interdisciplinary art practice integrates research-based installations within marginalized communities and periphery sites. She holds a bachelor's degree in fine arts from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design  where she graduated Cum laude.  Via her work with communities and sites, she aims to serve as a medium for their local, intertwined narratives while reflecting her own understanding of it. During her MFA at RISD, she aspires to continue developing an art form dependent on place, giving voice to marginalized communities and generating a skewed version of reality based on the local perspective. She hopes to be part of a proactive force that fosters this art form, where the blend between the political and the fantastical is captured in a new provisional space.

Dr. Dor Shilton was awarded a Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship to pursue his project titled “Towards an Integrative Theory of Music and Religious Rituals”. The project will entail the integration of concepts and evidence from two interdisciplinary fields, music science and the cognitive science of religion, to formulate and preliminarily test an overarching theory of music and religious rituals. It will include an analysis of an ethnographic dataset documenting 651 religious rituals in a representative global sample of cultures.

Dor completed his PhD at the School of Philosophy, Linguistics, and Science Studies at Tel Aviv University. His doctoral research critically assessed prevalent theories of human self-domestication and adaptationist theories of the evolution of music, and presented an alternative account of human evolution, with a specific focus on the role of music as a unique interactive technology. He is a postdoctoral fellow at the Edelstein Center at the Hebrew University and at the Cohn Institute at Tel Aviv University and is a research affiliate of the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at Oxford University.

Shilton, D., Patel, A. D., Hill, K., von Rueden, C. (2025). Why Collective Music-Making is Sometimes Rare: A Study of Four Indigenous Societies. Evolution and Human Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106695

Shilton, D., Passmore, S., Savage, P. E. (2023). Group singing is globally dominant and associated with social context. Royal Society Open Science, 10(9), 230562 https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.230562

Shilton, D. (2022). Sweet Participation: The Evolution of Music as an Interactive Technology. Music & Science, 5, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1177/20592043221084710

Eden is an elementary school educator specializing in Hebrew and English language instruction. She holds a bachelor's degree in criminology and political science from Bar Ilan University, a Teaching Certification from Levinsky-Wingate Academic College, and is currently pursuing a master's degree in educational technology and artificial intelligence at Ono Academic College. 

Eden is deeply invested in future-oriented pedagogy and focuses on integrating innovative digital tools and AI applications into the classroom to personalize learning and optimize language acquisition. Beyond her teaching duties, she serves as the school’s field trip coordinator. Alongside her academic roles, Eden has built a career as an instructor and choreographer for youth performance groups.

Through the Fulbright FLTA program, Eden will serve as a Hebrew language assistant at the University of Mississippi for the 2026-2027 academic year. She is eager to bring her background to the university and looks forward to sharing Israeli culture while promoting dynamic, cross-cultural learning on campus.

Dr. Eli Itkin was awarded a Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship to pursue his research titled "War and Its Effects on Local Populations in the Iron Age Southern Levant." The research aims to examine the impact of war on local communities in the southern Levant during the Iron Age, focusing on how conflict shaped settlement patterns, social structures, and regional dynamics.

Eli’s doctoral research, supervised by Professor Alexander Fantalkin and Professor Eliezer D. Oren, explores the complex interplay between imperial control and local resilience in southern Philistia during the 8th to 6th centuries BCE. Focusing on the southern Coastal Plain and western Negev, Eli’s work examines this region as a strategic frontier situated between the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires and Egypt. His research highlights how local communities responded to shifting imperial powers and navigated changing geopolitical conditions.

Recent Publications:

Fantalkin, A., Itkin, E., Chesnut, O., Mazis, M., Lorenzon, M., Bouzaglou, L., Eshel, T. And Sharvit. J. 2024.  Iron Age Remains from Ashdod-Yam: An Interim Report (2013–2019). Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies 12(3): 250–297.

Itkin, E. 2022. Post-Destruction “Squatter” Phases in the Iron Age IIB-C Southern Levant. Bulletin of the American Society of Overseas Research 388(1): 51–72. [Received the Chaim Rosenberg School of Jewish Studies and Archaeology Award for an Outstanding Publication, Tel Aviv University]

Itkin, E. 2020. Ḥorvat Tov: A Late Iron Age Fortress in the Northeastern Negev. Tel Aviv 47(1): 65–88.

Eyas Hegazi completed his M.Sc. in physics at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, where he specialized in nonlinear optics. Prior to receiving the FLTA scholarship he worked as a teaching assistant in undergraduate physics courses. Alongside his scientific background, Eyas has a strong interest in education and cultural exchange, which inspired him to join the Fulbright FLTA Program.

Eyas will serve as a Fulbright foreign language teaching assistant in Oregon, where he looks forward to experiencing the region's beautiful landscapes, sharing the Arabic language and culture, and learning from people of diverse cultures.

Dr. Gal Nitsan was awarded a Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship to pursue her research project, “From Lab to Life: Individual Differences in Auditory-Cognitive Training Outcomes and VR-Based Speech-in-Noise Assessment in Older Adults.” In this project, Gal will examine why some older adults struggle to understand speech in noisy environments, even when standard hearing tests appear normal, and why some individuals benefit more than others from auditory-cognitive training. The project will also evaluate the clinical potential of a virtual reality–based assessment tool designed to measure speech understanding and listening effort. Her aim is to support communication in aging populations by enabling audiologists to deliver the right intervention for the right patient at the right time.

Gal is a licensed speech-language pathologist and audiologist. She earned her BA in speech and hearing communication disorders from Tel Aviv University and her MA in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Haifa, where she also completed her PhD. During her PhD, under the joint supervision of Professor Karen Banai (University of Haifa) and Professor Boaz Ben-David (Department of Psychology, Reichman University), she used eye tracking and pupillometry to explore how individual differences in cognitive capacity influence spoken word recognition, listening effort, and adaptation to challenging listening conditions in younger and older adults.

Recent publication: 

Nitsan, G., Banai, K., & Ben-David, B. M. (2022). One Size Does Not Fit All: Examining the Effects of Working Memory Capacity on Spoken Word Recognition in Older Adults Using Eye Tracking. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 841466. 

Dr. Gidi Yoffe is a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Geological and Planetary Sciences at Caltech, following postdoctoral work at the Weizmann Institute of Science. His research focuses on the habitability of icy ocean worlds, especially Europa, and on how their surfaces record exchanges with subsurface oceans that may support life.

Gidi holds a B.Sc. in natural sciences (with honors) from the Open University of Israel, an M.Sc. in planetary science from the Weizmann Institute of Science, and a Ph.D. in statistics and data science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His earlier work spanned exoplanet dynamics, astronomical spectroscopy, and unsupervised analysis of complex data, including the Hebrew Bible, providing an interdisciplinary foundation for interpreting complex planetary data.

Gidi was awarded a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship for his project, From Surface Spectra to Subsurface Chemistry: A Predictive Framework for Ocean Worlds. His project explores how observations of Europa’s surface can be linked to ocean chemistry, surface evolution, and the survival thereupon of organic molecules that may serve as biosignatures. The research integrates planetary astronomy, physical and chemical modeling, and data-driven analysis to identify fresh or altered materials, assess radiation-driven change, and guide future missions to Europa, Enceladus, and other ocean worlds.

His recent publications include:

Yoffe et al., Molecular diversity as a biosignature. Nature Astronomy, 10, 664–673, 2026.

Yoffe et al., Geant4-IcyMoons. The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, 284, 80, 2026.

Yoffe and Shahaf, Spectral Decomposition Reveals Surface Processes on Europa. The Astrophysical Journal, 1001, 4, 2026.

Dr. Inbar Fischer was awarded a Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship to pursue her research project titled “Bioengineered System for Disease Mechanisms and Personalized Medicine”. In her research, Inbar will develop a microfluidic organ-on-a-chip platform that integrates healthy and diseased human 3D organ models within a single interconnected system. This platform will enable the identification of the tissue of origin and underlying mechanisms of complex diseases by modeling early disease progression and cross-tissue interactions. As a proof of concept, she will focus on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), aiming to pinpoint the disease’s origin and identify effective therapeutic strategies.

During her PhD at Tel Aviv University, under the supervision of Professor Boaz Barak, Inbar investigated the biological mechanisms underlying neurodevelopmental disorders, combining molecular neuroscience with bioengineering approaches. Her work bridges basic research and translational applications, with a focus on developing innovative tools for studying and treating brain disorders.

Fischer, I. Shohat, S., L Bardoogo, Y., Nayak, R., et al. "Shank3 mutation impairs glutamate signaling and myelination in ASD mouse model and human iPSC-derived OPCs". Science Advances, 2024.

Liran, M*., Fischer, I.* (equal contribution), Elboim, M., Rahamim, N., et al. "Long-term excessive alcohol consumption enhances myelination in the mouse nucleus accumbens". Journal of Neuroscience, 2025.

Fischer, I., Shohat, S., Levy, G., Bar, E., et al. "Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Alleviates Social Behavior Dysfunction and Neuroinflammation in a Mouse Model for Autism Spectrum Disorders". International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 2022.

Dr. Jhonatan Tavori was awarded a Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship to pursue his research on edge-cloud management under worst-case attack scenarios.

Jhonatan pursued his PhD, titled “Network Operation Under Malicious Behavior”, under the supervision of Professor Hanoch Levy at Tel Aviv University (TAU). Jhonatan explored various problems, including characterizing worst-case attacks on cloud networks, optimizing the control of viral spreading, investigating financial vulnerabilities in microservices architectures, and designing edge computing that processes real-time traffic and data.

For his PhD studies, Jhonatan was awarded The Blavatnik Prize for Outstanding Israeli Doctoral Graduates in Computer Science.

Jhonatan holds a B.Sc. in computer science (Summa Cum Laude) from the Open University of Israel, and an M.Sc. in computer science (Magna Cum Lauded) from TAU. He was selected as the valedictorian in both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. During his graduate studies, Jhonatan was awarded several distinctions, including the EU NGI Enrichers fellowship, TAU ‘100 list’ for teaching, an innovation scholarship for smart transportation research, the Deutsch Prize for PhD students, excellence academic achievements prize and stipend, and the school’s Outstanding Teaching Assistant award.

Among Jhonatan’s publications:

J. Tavori and H. Levy. Tornadoes In the Cloud: Worst-Case Attacks on Distributed Resources Systems. IEEE INFOCOM 2021.

J. Tavori and H. Levy. Resilience of Networks to Spreading Computer Viruses: Optimal Strategies for Anti-Virus Deployment. IEEE/IFIP NOMS 2023.

J. Tavori and H. Levy. How to Attack and Congest Delay-Sensitive Applications on the Cloud. IEEE INFOCOM 2023.

Lev is a graduate of the three-year program at the Nissan Nativ Acting Studio, Tel Aviv, a B.Ed. in theater directing and teaching from the Kibbutzim College, and an MFA graduate from Tel Aviv University. He is a graduate of the Mandel Foundation Regional Leadership Program.

Lev focuses on creating works dealing with geographic and social periphery with the aspiration for accurate representation. His work focuses on underrepresented communities, narratives and characters. He aims to strengthen the periphery as a base for diverse and local creative work. His films have been screened and awarded at festivals worldwide.

Lev was awarded the Fulbright fellowship to pursue his MFA degree with a focus on dramatic writing for the stage and screen at NYU.

Lina Sbeih holds a double major bachelor’s degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in anthropology and sociology, and in Asian Studies with a focus on Korean Studies.

As a Fulbright fellow, Lina will pursue a master's degree in sociology. Her academic and professional interests lie in business culture, migration, and the social values that shape how communities interact and organize, with a particular curiosity about societies across Asia. She studied the Korean language and is passionate about different cultures, languages, and connecting with people from around the world.

Before receiving the Fulbright fellowship, Lina worked at the Korean Air Tel Aviv branch as a sales admin and branch representative, where daily interactions with Korean colleagues and travelers gave her firsthand insight into how different cultures approach business etiquette and communication. This experience deepened her interest in how cultural values shape trust and decision-making across societies, an interest she now explores through a sociological lens.

Lina believes that studying in Hawaiʻi, a crossroads between the United States and the Asia-Pacific region, offers the ideal setting to continue exploring how the West and East connect.

Mahdi Hasan is a Ph.D. candidate in chemical biology at the Technion, where he conducts research under the supervision of Professor Ashraf Brik. His research focuses on developing innovative chemical biology tools to investigate ubiquitin signaling, biomolecular condensates, and targeted protein degradation, with the goal of understanding the crosstalk between different ubiquitin chain types and their roles in cellular signaling. His work integrates peptide chemistry, protein engineering and purification, chemical synthesis, microscopy, flow cytometry, cell and molecular biology, biochemistry, quantitative proteomics, and computational analysis.

Mahdi received both his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in biotechnology engineering from the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev under the supervision of Professor Isam Khalaila. His master's research focused on developing vitellogenin-derived peptide delivery systems for gene silencing, resulting in two peer-reviewed publications. His doctoral research has contributed to several peer-reviewed publications spanning targeted protein degradation, protein delivery, and peptide development for modulating biomolecular condensates. 

As a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Scripps Research, he will expand his expertise by applying advanced chemical biology and Chemoproteomics approaches to investigate dynamic protein signalling and protein complexes, with the long-term goal of developing innovative therapeutic strategies.

In addition to his research, Mahdi is actively involved in teaching undergraduate chemistry laboratories and mentoring students. He also participates in science outreach initiatives that encourage curiosity and scientific engagement among diverse communities. Beyond the laboratory, he enjoys hiking, mountaineering, and exploring nature. He believes that the resilience, curiosity, and perseverance developed in the mountains are the same qualities that drive scientific discovery and innovation.

Selected publication: 

1. Hasan M., Vodnala N., Glagovsky Y., Saed Y., Kriegesmann J., Suga H., Brik A. Direct Cellular Screening of Pd-Mediated Arylation of Cyclic Peptide Binders Targeting Ubiquitin Chains: Towards Modulating NEMO Liquid-Liquid Phase Separation. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2025, 147, 28303–28312. 
2. Hasan M., Panda D., Mann G., Brik A. De novo Semi-Synthetic Platform for Monitoring Protein Degradation in Live Cells. ChemBioChem2024, 25, e202300731. 
3. Nassar E., Donthuju A., Hasan M., Brik A. Chemical Synthesis of Mirror-Image Proteins Reveals Chirality-Dependent Cellular Uptake Mediated by a Cell-Penetrating Peptide. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2026. DOI: 10.1021/jacs.6c03792.

Majd Haddad is a lawyer who will pursue an LL.M. at Yale Law School as a Fulbright fellow.

Majd earned his LL.B. from Tel Aviv University and his first LL.M. (summa cum laude) through the "Law and Other Languages" program, a joint program of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and the Emile Zola Chair of Human Rights.

During his legal studies, Majd served as a teaching and research assistant in several fields of law and was an editor of the Tel Aviv University Law Review. He also worked at Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, where he contributed to constitutional and human rights litigation.

Prior to beginning his studies at Yale, Majd worked as a public defender, representing indigent clients at every stage of criminal proceedings and safeguarding defendants' rights. He also served as coordinator of the Arab Student Support Program at Tel Aviv University's Faculty of Law, where he developed initiatives to help Arab students overcome linguistic and structural barriers to academic success.

Dr. Matan Uzan received his B.Sc. in physics from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in physics from the Weizmann Institute of Science under the supervision of Professor Eli Zeldov. His research focuses on strongly correlated quantum matter in two-dimensional materials, combining advanced nanofabrication, low-temperature electronic transport, scanning SQUID-on-tip magnetometry, and theoretical modeling to uncover how atomic-scale structure governs emergent electronic phases.

Matan’s work has explored the microscopic origin of correlated and topological states in graphene-based moiré materials. In particular, he demonstrated that a previously overlooked atomic-scale feature in graphene/hexagonal boron nitride heterostructures fundamentally reshapes the correlated electronic phase diagram, providing a new framework for understanding and controlling quantum phases in these systems.

As a Fulbright postdoctoral fellow, Matan will join Professor Long Ju's group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he will investigate emergent quantum phenomena in van der Waals heterostructures and develop new approaches for studying correlated and topological states in two-dimensional materials.

Selected publications:

M. Uzan et al., " hBN alignment orientation controls moiré strength in rhombohedral graphene", arXiv.2507.20647 (2025).

N. Auerbach*, S. Dutta*, M. Uzan* et al "Isospin magnetic texture and intervalley exchange interaction in rhombohedral tetralayer graphene", Nat. Phys. 21, 1765–1772 (2025).

M. Bocarsly*, M. Uzan* et al, "De Haas–van Alphen spectroscopy and magnetic breakdown in moiré graphene", Science 383, 42–48 (2024).

Dr. Mor Keinan-Bar was awarded the Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship to pursue her research project titled “Decoding Heterogeneity in Childbirth PTSD: From Mechanistic Discovery to Precision Prevention.” In her research at Massachusetts General Hospital, Mor will examine distinct pathways underlying childbirth-related post-traumatic stress disorder of postpartum women. These mechanistic discoveries will provide the basis for a deployable decision-support algorithm, determining not merely who is at risk, but which regulatory process is failing, and when, opening the door to personalized, preventive care.

Mor earned her Ph.D. at Tel Aviv University, under the supervision of Professor Shlomo Mendlovic, where she developed a novel framework for analyzing psychotherapy sessions to uncover the “black box” of psychotherapy – identifying which mechanisms drive treatment outcome in micro-level resolution. Her work bridges clinical psychology, computational mental health, and translational research.

Beyond her research, Mor is a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in complex trauma and eating disorders – clinical grounding that keeps her research closely tied to patient care.

Dr. Muna Abd El-Raziq was awarded a Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship to pursue her research at the Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders at New York University under Professor Sudha Arunachalam. Her project, titled "Lexical Abilities in Monolingual and Bilingual Arabic-Speaking Children with and without Autism," examines how bilingualism and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) influence lexical development. Using eye-tracking and parents’ reports, she will compare Arabic- and English-speaking monolinguals and Arabic-English bilinguals with and without ASD, investigating the impact of Arabic diglossia and complex morphology on lexical comprehension. This study addresses a significant gap by focusing on Arabic-speaking children, underrepresented in autism research.

Muna earned her BA and MA in communication disorders from Tel Aviv University and completed her PhD in linguistics (in clinical research) at Bar-Ilan University, under Professors Natalia Meir and Elinor Saiegh-Haddad. Her doctoral research examined language profiles of Palestinian-Arabic speaking children with and without ASD across phonology, morphosyntax, and lexicon in diglossic context, linking these domains with theory of mind and cognitive skills, with theoretical and practical implications for individualized profiling.

She has received awards including the BSF Professor Rahamimoff Travel Grant, Dean’s Award for Academic Excellence, the President’s Prize for Published Research, and Bar-Ilan University’s Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Her recent publications:

Abd El-Raziq, M., Saiegh-Haddad, E., & Meir, N. (2025). Language, Theory of Mind, and Cognitive skills in autistic and non-autistic Arabic-speaking children: Evidence from Network and Cluster analyses. Journal of Communication Disorders.   

10.1016/j.jcomdis.2024.106476

Abd El-Raziq, M., Meir, N., & Saiegh-Haddad, E. (2024). Morphosyntactic skills in Arabic-speaking children with autism spectrum disorder: Evidence from error patterns in the sentence repetition task. Autism & Developmental Language Impairments, 9. https://doi.org/10.1177/23969415241234649 

Abd El-Raziq, M., Meir, N., & Saiegh-Haddad, E. (2024). Lexical skills in children with and without autism in Arabic diglossia: Evidence from vocabulary and narrative tasks. Language Acquisition, 31(3-4), 199 - 223.‏ https://doi.org/10.1080/10489223.2023.2268615

Nadav Yochman holds a dual Bachelor of Science in statistics and data science and in the interdisciplinary MATAR honors program from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

As a Fulbright fellow, Nadav will pursue the Jacobs Technion-Cornell dual Master of Science degrees in information systems, specializing in connective media. His academic and professional interests lie at the intersection of technology and society, with a particular focus on leveraging AI to advance social progress and drive meaningful change. He is passionate about using data-driven approaches to build tools that foster trust, promote equity, and help shape a more inclusive and responsible technological future.

Before receiving the Fulbright fellowship, he worked at Intel as an AI product analyst.

Nadia Abu Ata is a licensed clinical dietitian and certified laboratory technician issued by the Israeli Ministry of Health. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture B. in nutrition science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is also a certified personal fitness trainer from the Wingate Institute. Nadia currently works as a medical lab technician at Maccabi Healthcare Services’s central laboratories in Rehovot, where she contributes to diagnostic accuracy through sample analysis and equipment troubleshooting in hematology.

Her multidisciplinary background includes work as a research assistant at the Weizmann Institute of Science and as an educator and translator at the Clore Science Museum, part of the Davidson Institute. Passionate about community-building, Nadia volunteers as a project manager with the Harmony Community, where she leads professional and social initiatives.

In the coming year, Nadia will pursue a Master of Public Health with an emphasis on epidemiology at Washington University in St. Louis, aiming to deepen her impact on population health.

Dr. Nir Ratzkovsky is an Israeli writer, translator and scholar. He teaches in the Department of Culture Studies at the University of Haifa. 

Nir was awarded an International Writing Program fellowship at the University of Iowa, taking part in the writing residency program there.

His publications include the novel Beloved, Daughter (2013), the children’s book Lech Lecha (2016), and the research book Adventures of Molière in the Holy Tongue (2024), as well as academic papers and journalistic writing. For many years he was editor of the Livres en scène (“Books on stage”) festival at the Cameri Theatre in Tel-Aviv. 

As a translator, Nir has translated numerous works of French literature into Hebrew, by prominent contemporary writers such as Michel Houellebecq, Emmanuel Carrère and Patrick Modiano, and classic writers such as Albert Camus, Marcel Proust, Victor Hugo, Simone de Beauvoir, Romain Gary and others. For his work as a translator, Nir was awarded the title of Chevalier in the Ordre des Palmes Académiques by the French government. 

Nitai Ginio is an attorney specializing in international law. Nitai was awarded the Fulbright fellowship to pursue an LL.M. degree in the international legal studies program at New York University School of Law. His academic and professional interests include international dispute settlement, the relationship between international and domestic law, and the role of international law in addressing property disputes arising in post-conflict settings.

Prior to receiving the fellowship, Nitai worked at the Office of the Deputy Attorney General for International Law within Israel’s Ministry of Justice. In that capacity, he advised government entities on matters at the intersection of international and domestic law, including international legal proceedings, public international law, international criminal law and human rights law. For the past two years, Nitai served as a member of Israel’s legal team in the South Africa v. Israel case before the International Court of Justice, working on written pleadings submitted to the Court and joining Israel’s delegation to oral hearings held at the Peace Palace in The Hague.

Nitai earned his LL.B. (magna cum laude) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2021. During his studies, he completed an exchange program at the Center for Transnational Legal Studies in London, co-hosted by Georgetown University. He also served as a teaching assistant in public international law for Professor Yael Ronen at the Academic Center for Law and Science.

Dr. Nur Kassem was awarded a Fulbright Postdoctoral Research Fellowship to pursue her project, “Pathways to Resilience and Reconciliation: Intervention Content and Provider’s Social Identity,” with Dr. Rezarta Bilali at New York University (NYU). Her work focuses on developing intervention tools to foster resilience and promote equality across diverse social groups, particularly through empathy- and acknowledgment-based interventions in higher education.

Nur completed her PhD in psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she was affiliated with both the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab and the Psychology of Intergroup Conflict and Reconciliation Lab. During her doctoral studies, she received several honors, including the President's Scholarship for Excellence and Scientific Innovation (2024-2025). She was also a fellow of the Ariane de Rothschild Women's Doctoral Program for Outstanding Female Students (2020-2024) and the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace (2022-2025).

Nur’s publications include:

Kassem, N., Cohen-Eick, N., Halperin, E., & Perry, A. (2025). Bonding versus fragmentation: What shapes disadvantaged intragroup empathy in advantaged contexts? Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 28(1), 97–114.

Kassem, N., Nir, N., Perry, A., & Halperin, E. (2025). Intergroup emotions in intergroup conflicts: A power disparities perspective. In S. A. Samoilenko & S. Simmons (Eds.), The Handbook of Social and Political Conflict (pp. 31–45). Wiley-Blackwell.

Kassem, N., Rum, Y., & Perry, A. (2024). To feel and talk in a language of conflict: Distinct emotional experience and expression of bilinguals among disadvantaged minority members. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 45(8), 2992–3009.

Dr. Ofir Yesharim earned his B.Sc. from the Technion - – Israel Institute of Technology, followed by M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering at Tel Aviv University under the supervision of Professor Ady Arie. His research has explored how structuring light via nonlinear processes enables new capabilities in quantum state generation, control, and measurement, with applications in quantum sensing and communications. He demonstrated the first realization of a quantum hologram, enabling versatile quantum state generation for secure communication. In addition, he explored how analogies between condensed matter physics and nonlinear optics enable new tools for light manipulation consisting of many colors, along with other experimental demonstrations for manipulating spatial and spectral degrees of freedom of light.

Ofir has received several awards for his research, including the Rothschild Award for Excellent Ph.Ds and a quantum science and technology fellowship for Ph.D. students from the Planning and Budgeting Committee of the Council for Higher Education.

As a Fulbright postdoctoral fellow, his work will continue to build on his expertise in quantum information science, with an emphasis on integrated photonic platforms.

Publication list:

Ofir Yesharim, Shani Izhak, Ady Arie “Pseudo-Spin Light Circuits in Nonlinear Photonic Crystals”. Nature communications 16, 6508 (2025).

Ofir Yesharim*, Shaul Pearl*, Joshua Comer-Foley, Irit Juwiler, Ady Arie, “Generating spatially entangled qudits using quantum nonlinear holography”.  Science Advances Vol. 9, Issue 8 (2023).

Ofir Yesharim, Aviv Karnieli, Steven Jackel, Giuseppe Di Domenico, Sivan Trajtenberg Mills, Ady Arie. “Observation of the All-Optical Stern-Gerlach Effect in Nonlinear Optics”.  Nature Photonics Vol. 6, pp.582-587 (2022).

Dr. Ohad Bitan is an internal medicine physician at Sheba Medical Center in Israel. He was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to pursue a mid-career master’s in public administration at the University of California, Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy.

At Sheba, Ohad serves as Deputy Director of the Department of Internal Medicine C and co- founded and leads the Center for Social Medicine. The Center integrates clinical care, research, education, and community partnerships to improve healthcare for underserved populations, including refugees, asylum seekers, migrant workers, and people experiencing homelessness. Through the Center, he develops innovative models of care, leads research on health equity and healthcare delivery, and advances medical education in social medicine for students and healthcare professionals.

In addition to his leadership roles, Ohad teaches medical students at Tel Aviv University and is completing his residency training in medical administration. Throughout his career, he has combined clinical practice, research, education, and health system leadership to address systemic barriers to healthcare and promote more equitable access to care.

Through the MPA program at Berkeley, Ohad aims to deepen his expertise in public policy, organizational leadership, and health system management. He plans to apply these tools to strengthen healthcare systems, integrate social determinants of health into policy and practice, and improve health outcomes for vulnerable populations in Israel and beyond.

Dr. Omer Eldadi was awarded a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship to conduct research with Professor Abraham Loeb at Harvard University’s Center for Astrophysics. His project brings the tools and knowledge of social and performance psychology to the scientific study of anomalous phenomena, examining how research teams reason, communicate, and make decisions under uncertainty, and how scientific communities respond to evidence that challenges prevailing paradigms.

Omer completed his PhD at Reichman University. His research spans team cognition, communication analysis, and the psychology of scientific paradigm resistance, drawing on data that ranges from aviation, sports, esports, and spaceflight crews to large international surveys of public belief. At Harvard, he aims to bridge the methods of psychology and astrophysics, strengthening how interdisciplinary teams pursue some of science’s most fundamental open questions.

Omer is a founding member of the UAP Science Advisory Council, chaired by Professor Loeb, which provides scientific guidance to the White House, ODNI, FBI, and AARO on the study of unidentified anomalous phenomena. Before his academic career, Omer graduated from the Israeli Naval Academy and served for seven years as an operational naval officer, including as executive officer (second-in-command) of a missile ship, experience that continues to shape his interest in performance and coordination within high-stakes teams.

Selected Publications:

1. Eldadi, O., & Tenenbaum, G. (2025). Team cognition (TC) in sport: Foundations, development, and performance implications. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 80, Article 102927. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2025.102927

2. Eldadi, O., Fitoussi, S. J., & Tenenbaum, G. (2025). Verbal communication, coordinated effort, and performance in esports teams: An expert–nonexpert paradigm study. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 47(5), 320-332. https://doi.org/10.1123/jsep.2024-0343

3. Eldadi, O., Sharon-David, H., & Tenenbaum, G. (2023). Interpersonal emotions in team sports: Effects of emotional contagion on emotional, social, and performance outcomes of a team. Scientific Journal of Sport and Performance, 2, 473-491. https://doi.org/10.55860/KCDX3917

Dr. Omer Hacker was awarded a Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship to pursue his research project titled “Incorporating the Spirit: Tech Companies Sovereignty and the Inclusion of Religion.” In the high-tech industry, where work is expected to be a realm for self-realization and employees are encouraged to “bring their whole self” to the workplace, the research asks - what is the place of religion in the new relationship? Which religious activities are legitimized or even supported by the workplace? Which activities are pushed out and why? The research will be based on fieldwork in the New York City tech industry.

This project is a development of Omer’s doctoral research, which focused on the concept of time in the global high-tech industry, and in particular how changes in working hours affect the time systems of religious tech workers. The PhD research was based on ethnography in a global high-tech corporation, and interviews with observant Jewish and Muslim tech workers in Toronto and Tel Aviv.

Omer’s publications include:

Hacker, Omer. “Time With No Time: Coordinating the Tech Workplace.” Current Anthropology (Forthcoming).

Chen, Lior, Omer Hacker, and Nurit Stadler. Sacred Places in the Holy Land – An Ethnographic Perspective. Ra’anana: The Open University of Israel.

Omer Nir-Becker is a legal historian who studies how the legal instruments of the past shape the institutions we live under today. Trained in both law and history, he currently studies early modern royal charters as vehicles of British imperial expansion, which granted corporations and individual proprietors the authority to govern colonies overseas. 

This research pairs archival materials with computational methods, building a corpus of imperial charters (1555–1732) to study this transformation at scale. His thesis, “One Crown, Many Ventures,” supervised by Professor Ron Harris, asks how the monarchy used a single legal instrument, the royal charter, to create and govern ventures as varied as trading companies and proprietary colonies. The project, which uncovers empirical evidence that the imperial strategy was more coherent than previously recognized, was accepted for presentation at the annual meeting of the American Society for Legal History.

Omer, a member of the Israel Bar Association, completed his thesis at Tel Aviv University, where he was supported by fellowships and grants from the Center for AI & Data and the Center for the Study of the United States. He holds an LL.B. and a B.A. in history, both magna cum laude, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. As an undergraduate, he was a fellow in the Institute for History Honors Program, received the George L. Mosse Prize for his dissertation, and served as a teaching and research assistant in the Faculty of Law. As a Fulbright Fellow, Omer will pursue an LL.M. at Harvard Law School.

Dr. Omri Cohen was awarded a Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship to pursue his project titled “Towards a Theory of Urban Populism”. Addressing two separate disciplines, populism and urban studies, this project will empirically explore urban populism on three levels: 1) populism of the city—how is a “local people” constructed and mobilized against “local elites”? 2) populism in the city—what role does the city play as a site of national populism? 3) populism and the city—how is the city influenced by and reacts to populism on the national level? Additionally, the project will involve conceptual development and normative analysis to complement the empirical findings.

Previously, Cohen completed a bachelor's degree and master’s degree in English literature from the Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University, respectively. Before turning to political science, he published research on education and empathy in minority literature.

Cohen completed his PhD under the supervision of Professor Dani Filc and Dr. Noam Tirosh. His work covers issues of populist theory, democratization, urban political theory, and digital political communication.

Key publications from his PhD include:

Cohen, O. (2025). Can urban populism democratize the city? The Tel Aviv-Jaffa 2008 municipal elections and their aftermath, Cities. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2024.105524

Cohen, O. (2025). Practices of transformative populism: An illustrative study of the Bernie Sanders presidential runs. Political Studies Review. https://doi.org/10.1177/14789299251326781

Oren graduated with a bachelor's degree in business administration and theater studies with a specialization in the management of cultural institutions. He has worked as a director of institutions and projects in the fields of art and culture, actor, musician, choreographer, and owner of a digital startup for managing processes in manufacturing companies.

Oren was awarded the Fulbright Fellowship to pursue a master’s in arts management at Carnegie Mellon University.

Oren believes that professional and ground-breaking management of cultural institutions allows different voices in society to be heard and the different arts to become relevant. Studying in the USA will allow him to acquire  new management methods that encourage inclusion and connection between the center and the periphery.

When he returns Oren hopes to allow creators from all spectrums to find a home in cultural institutions, express their unique voice, while connecting to their ancient heritage, toward progress and peace.

Dr. Ran Abuhasira was awarded a Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship to conduct research in the Division of Rheumatology, Allergy, and Immunology at Massachusetts General Hospital and in the Department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. His research applies proteomics to identify protein signatures that reflect genetic, environmental, and metabolic pathways involved in the onset and progression of gout. By uncovering these markers, he aims to enhance risk prediction, improve disease prognosis, and advance personalized strategies for the prevention and management of gout and related metabolic-inflammatory conditions.

Ran is a senior physician in an internal medicine department and head of the Clinical Research Center at Soroka University Medical Center in Beer Sheva, Israel. He holds an MD/PhD from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, where he graduated summa cum laude. His PhD in epidemiology, supervised by Professor Victor Novack, focused on the safety and efficacy of medical cannabis in older adults. He completed his internship at Assuta Ashdod Hospital and his residency in internal medicine at Rabin Medical Center.

Selected Publications:

Abuhasira R, Haviv YS, Leiba M, Leiba A, Ryvo L, Novack V. Cannabis Is Associated with Blood Pressure Reduction in Older Adults – A 24-Hours Ambulatory Blood Pressure Monitoring Study. Eur J Intern Med. 2021 Apr; 86:79–85.

Abuhasira R, Anstey M, Novack V, Bose S, Talmor D, Fuchs L. Intensive care unit capacity and mortality in older adults: a three nations retrospective observational cohort study. Ann Intensive Care. 2022 Mar 4;12(1):20.

Abuhasira R, Burrack N, Turjeman A, Patt YS, Leibovici L, Grossman A. Comparative Analysis of First-Line Antihypertensive Treatment Classes. Am J Med. 2025 Mar;138(3):449–457.e7.

Rana Badarni was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to pursue a Master of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis, where she aims to specialize in forensic social work, trauma, and family welfare.

Rana is a social worker with a Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. During her studies, she received the Rothschild Ambassadors’ scholarship for academic excellence and social leadership.

Following her degree, she served, through the Ministry of Welfare and Social Security, as a juvenile probation officer in East Jerusalem and, for the past decade, as a senior probation officer in the Adult Probation Service in Tel Aviv. In recognition of her dedication and contributions, she was honored as the Distinguished Probation Officer for the Tel Aviv District in 2019.Rana's professional work and academic aspirations are reducing risk to individuals and society through the rehabilitation and reintegration of perpetrators into the community.

Raneen Baransi is a senior software engineer at Intel and a Fulbright fellow pursuing an MS in computer science at the University of Central Florida (UCF). She holds a B.Sc. in computer science from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, where she was awarded the Outstanding Arab Youth Scholarship.

With several years of experience in the high-tech industry, Raneen has contributed to large-scale software engineering projects while mentoring junior engineers and supporting initiatives that advance diversity and inclusion in STEM.

Her academic interests focus on the intersection of Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, and socially impactful technologies. Through her graduate studies, she seeks to deepen her expertise in AI, contribute to responsible and ethical research, and develop innovative solutions that address meaningful real-world challenges.

Roie Gilad is a Fulbright Scholar pursuing a Master of Science in Computer Science at Columbia University. He graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Psychology, with an emphasis in neuroscience, from Tel Aviv University. Throughout his academic journey, Roie has investigated the intersection of human and artificial cognition through the university research labs. To fund his studies, he also worked as a software engineer at an augmented reality startup, where he designed scalable distributed systems for the company’s data-generation platform.

Following his undergraduate studies, Roie joined Mobileye as a deep learning engineer, where he advanced computer vision models for core perception products, including the detection of crosswalks, stop lines, and speed bumps. Following his career, he stepped into a management role, leading a team of engineers and taking technical responsibility for four distinct perception products.

As an aspiring architect of human-aware AI, Roie is committed to bridging the gap between deep learning models and lived human experience. Through Columbia’s MS program, he aims to gain the advanced computational training and theoretical frameworks necessary to integrate causal AI and representation learning with human-centered intelligence. His early volunteer work with children, combined with observing the narrow, statistical limitations of industrial machine learning, has deeply reinforced his commitment to developing technology that evolves to complement, rather than just mimic, human intelligence.

Professor Roy Horovitz is an acclaimed Israeli actor, director, translator, dramaturge and scholar. He is the chair of the drama and theatre program at Bar-llan University, and a senior lecturer at the David Yellin Academic College, Jerusalem.

Roy was awarded the International Writing Program fellowship at Iowa University to take part in the writing residency program.

Horovitz has performed many roles for various theatres and represented Israel in many prestigious festivals around the world. He has been awarded "Best Actor" at the International Haifa Festival, 1997, and the "Best Director Award" for directing "Pollard's Trial" at the Cameri Theatre in Tel-Aviv. His films includes "The Body" with Antonio Banderas. Horovitz also directed a succession of critically acclaimed productions at Habima (Israel's national theatre), was the artistic director of the municipal theatre in Kiryat Shmona, the dramaturge of Beer-Sheba Theatre and a visiting professor at the American University in Washington DC and the University of Texas in Austin.

His Book, " A World of Innocents - The Dramatic Afterlife of the Bible in Yaakov Shabtai's Plays" which was published in 2021, gained rave reviews and won the prestigious "Scientific Excellence Award" in Israel.

Samar Kadri Shibi is from Jerusalem. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English studies and Hebrew linguistics from Tel-Aviv University and a master’s degree in gender and diversity from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has several years of teaching experience in public schools, as well as experience in a bilingual educational setting, working with students from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

Samar is committed to language education and intercultural exchange and believes that learning languages creates meaningful connections between people and communities. As an Arabic Foreign Language Teaching Assistant at the University of Texas at Austin, she looks forward to sharing Arabic language and culture while learning from new perspectives and educational experiences that foster dialogue, mutual understanding, and lifelong learning.

Sapir was awarded an FLTA Fulbright fellowship to serve as a Hebrew language assistant at Colgate University.

Sapir holds a bachelor's degree in political science and international relations from the Open University of Israel, where she cultivated a strong interest in political philosophy and conflict resolution.
 Alongside her academic pursuits, she has built a career as a linguistic instructor, grounded in extensive training in Semitic languages – both Hebrew and Arabic, the latter of which she has used as a translator and researcher. Her admiration for language, as both a cultural and communicative bridge, guided her work teaching Hebrew to new immigrants in Jerusalem.

 For the past three years, she has worked as an English instructor, preparing university-bound students for academic English requirements. Currently, Sapir is expanding her expertise through advanced studies in anthropology, economics, and pedagogy, with a continued commitment to developing accessible, relevant English instruction for Israeli adult learners.

Shahar Livne was awarded a Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship to pursue her research at the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Her project examines how climate-induced migration in the Malawi-Mozambique borderlands interacts with nationalist health security policies. By analyzing cholera transmission and care pathways in borderland areas, she aims to explore cross-border mechanisms that shift away from state-centric models to support both traditional coping mechanisms and regional cholera elimination goals.

Shahar is a PhD candidate at the School of Public Health at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Her doctoral research, supervised by Professors Anat Rosenthal and Nadav Davidovitch, examines the nexus between climatic disasters, health, and food insecurity, focusing on rural healthcare services in Malawi. Shahar is also a YSSP fellow at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria, where she studies the continuity of care amid multi-hazards in the Malawian health system.

Her recent publications: 

Livne S, Mwendera M, Chibvunde S, et al. The convergence of health system, climate, and social 

pathways in Malawi’s 2022-2024 cholera outbreak - A qualitative assessment. PLoS Negl Trop Dis (in press). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0014529

Livne S, Chibvunde S, Mwendera M, et al. The fundamental causes of disaster vulnerability: Subsistence agricultural land loss in rural Malawi. Int J Disaster Risk Reduct 2026;132:105943. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2025.105943.

Livne S, Feldblum I, Kivity S, et al. Kidnapping-induced trauma and secondary stress in armed conflicts: A comparative study among women in hostage families, volunteers, and the general population. Isr J Health Policy Res 2024;13:64. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13584-024-00650-8.

Dr. Shir Genzer was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to pursue her research project titled "The Trajectory of Empathy in Emerging Friendships: A Longitudinal, Multi-Method Dyadic Study". In her research, Shir investigates how empathy shapes the development of friendships over time, combining behavioral and neural tools to uncover the mechanisms underlying social connection. While most studies examine empathy at a single time point among strangers or romantic couples, her project takes a longitudinal approach, tracking how the function of empathy and its neural underpinnings shift throughout a developing relationship in ways that foster closeness. As loneliness becomes an increasingly pressing global concern, this work illuminates how meaningful social bonds are formed and sustained.

During her PhD at the Hebrew University, under the supervision of Professor Anat Perry, Shir investigated empathy from a dyadic perspective, exploring how different elements of an interaction shape the experience of both partners. Her work combined naturalistic behavioral methods with physiological measures such as EEG, heart rate, skin conductance, and eye tracking, capturing empathy as it unfolds in real time between people.

Genzer, S., & Perry, A. (in press). Empathy as a dyadic process. Nature Reviews Psychology.

Genzer, S., Rum, Y., Krämer, U. M., & Perry, A. (in press). Seeing to Connect: How Visual and Auditory Channels Shape Empathic Interactions in Digital Communication. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Genzer, S., Rubin, R., Sened, H., Rafaeli, E., Ochsner, K., Cohen, N., & Perry, A. (2025). Directional bias in interpersonal emotion perception. Nature Communications. 17(1), 167. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-66879-2

Dr. Shirly Orr was awarded a Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship to pursue her research project, “The effect of the (dis)trust mindset on the construction of meaning and attribution of truth”. In this project, Orr plans to empirically investigate the relationship between “truth” and “meaning”, focusing on how “trust” modulates that relationship. Her aim is to shed light on the dynamic process of constructing meaning under different goals and mindsets.

Orr earned her BA in Hebrew and Semitic languages from Bar-Ilan University and an MA in Jewish Studies at the University of Maryland. She completed both her MA thesis and PhD dissertation in linguistics at Tel Aviv University. Her doctoral dissertation, “Predicating Truth: An Empirical Investigation”, explored the concept of truth by studying its use in natural interaction (e.g., the use of “true” in discourse) and its connection to other concepts (e.g., the relationship between truth and agreement). Her work—then and now—seeks to offer a different perspective on truth, one grounded in empirical inquiry and shaped by an interactional usage-based approach.

Orr, S., Ariel, M., & Shetreet, E. (2024). Scales and inferences. Language and Cognition 16(4), 1899–1924. https://doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2024.36

Orr, S., & Ariel, M. (2021). Predicating Truth: An empirically based analysis. Journal of Pragmatics, 185, 131–145. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2021.09.005

Orr, S., Ariel, M., & Peleg, O. (2017). The case of literally true propositions with false implicatures. In I. Chiluwa (Ed.), Deception and Deceptive Communication: Motivations, Recognition Techniques and Behavioral Control (pp. 67–107). Nova Science Publishers.

Simon’s research is focused on Solid State Physics, which is the study of what electrons and atoms do inside solid matter and their highly irregular behavior, such as the emergence of internal electrical polarization in multilayer graphene (a 2D material). This is surprising because it was found that electrons regroup at a specific position in the crystal despite repelling one another electrically. 

Simon’s team took layered materials, that stack as a pile of papers, and studied how their properties change as we slide some of the layers to new metastable positions. These works lay the groundwork for a new kind of electric component that can be called “slide-tronics”. Currently, he is focused on creating materials that influence electrons so that they behave like fluids rather than the normal behavior observed in conventional materials.

Recent publications:

Salleh Atri, S. et al. Spontaneous Electric Polarization in Graphene Polytypes. Advanced Physics Research 3, 2300095 (2024).

Vizner Stern, M., Salleh Atri, S. & Ben Shalom, M. Sliding van der Waals polytypes. Nature Reviews Physics 2024 7:1 7, 50–61 (2024).

Tamara Kashour is an educator from Jerusalem and a dual B.A. graduate in English Literature and Education from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she graduated with distinction. Her academic and professional work is grounded in a sustained interest in language as a space where identity, culture, and understanding intersect. As a native Arabic speaker fluent in English and Hebrew, her perspective is shaped by navigating multiple linguistic and cultural worlds.

As a Foreign Language Teaching Assistant in Arabic at Bard College, Tamara aims to bring this approach into her teaching in the United States. She seeks to create a classroom where Arabic is experienced not only as a language but as a bridge, fostering curiosity, dialogue, and meaningful cross-cultural exchange.

Tamara has taught English across Grades 1–11 in bilingual and multicultural classrooms, including at Hand in Hand, a Hebrew–Arabic school committed to advancing a shared society through education. In these settings, she developed a teaching practice rooted in dialogue, empathy, and student-centered learning, where language functions as a tool for connection rather than memorization. She also holds an iTEACH ESL certification from the Hebrew University and has tutored international university students in Arabic at the Rothberg International School.

Tzur received his LL.B concentrating in business and B.A in  history concentrating in global post world wars trends.

In 2015, Tzur established the organization representing the families of Israel’s hostages in Gaza and leading the public campaign for Israel’s hostages return home. In 2016, Tzur established the Bystander Israel, an NGO focusing on bystander impact in the context of public sexual harassment.

Tzur is currently an associate at Herzog Fox & Neeman specializing in corporate and commercial transactions.  He was awarded the Fulbright fellowship to pursue his MPP at the  Kennedy School at Harvard University.

Yael Dekel-Shafrir is the head of the Special Affairs Unit at the Attorney General's Office in Israel and an incoming student in the mid-career Master of Public Administration Program at the Harvard Kennedy School Based in Israel, Yael has dedicated her career to advancing democratic values and the rule of law.

As a legal professional, Yael addresses critical constitutional challenges, safeguarding democratic institutions within complex societal and political changes.

As a Fulbright fellow Yael will pursue a master’s degree in public administration at Harvard University. Previously she served as director of the Department of Economic Law, leading significant governmental legislation and policy initiatives, and as a member of the Administrative Enforcement Committee of the Israel Securities Authority. Her exceptional contributions, including her leadership in shaping the Arrangements Law, earned her the Ministry of Justice Excellence Award in 2022.

Earlier in her career, Yael prosecuted economic crimes at the State Attorney's Office. She holds an LLM (magna cum laude) from Bar-Ilan University and an LLB from Tel Aviv University.

Dr. Yael Kapon was awarded a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship to pursue her research on prebiotic self-assembly in realistic planetary environments at the California Institute of Technology’s (Caltech) Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences.

Yael earned her PhD in applied physics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem under the supervision of Professor Yossi Paltiel. Her doctoral research focused on chiral-induced spin selectivity, exploring how physical spin interactions at the molecular scale can influence biological recognition, magnetic interfaces, and self-assembly. Her doctoral dissertation, “Dynamic Spin Interactions in Chiral Systems,” was awarded the Hans Wiener Prize for Doctoral Dissertation.

Following her PhD, Yael was a postdoctoral researcher in Professor Moran Frenkel-Pinter’s group at the Hebrew University, where she studied the self-assembly of prebiotic molecular building blocks under plausible early-Earth conditions.

At Caltech, Yael will investigate how membrane-forming lipids could arise under realistic early Earth and planetary conditions, and how such assemblies could acquire functional properties relevant to the origins of life.

Yael is a recipient of various awards, including the Zuckerman STEM Leadership Program fellowship and the Council of Higher Education Scholarship for Female PhD Students in STEM.

Selected publications:

Kapon, Y., Saha, A., et al. “Evidence to New Enantio-Specific Interaction Force in Chiral Biomolecules.” Chem 7, 2787–2799 (2021).

Kapon, Y., Merhav, D., et al. “Controlling Amyloid Assembly Dynamics Using Spin Interfaces.” ACS Nano 19, 28326–28334 (2025).

Kapon, Y., Kammerbauer, F., et al. “Effects of Chiral Polypeptides on Skyrmion Stability and Dynamics.” Nano Letters 25, 1 (2024).

Yael is a licensed architect with diverse experience in architectural design, urban planning, and research. She graduated with a B.Arch. from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem. Before receiving the Fulbright award, Yael served as a team lead in the Integrated Urban Planning Projects Division at the Holon Municipality. She also served as a research coordinator for the Jerusalem Archives Project and as a teaching assistant for the "Digital Crafts" course. She is a recipient of the Head of the School of Architecture Award at Bezalel and the President’s Award for Excellence for contributions during military service.

During her studies in the U.S., Yael will deepen her expertise in urban planning and the integration of statutory frameworks with digital tools.

Yarden Segal graduated from Tel Aviv University with a B.A. in English Literature and Theatre Arts in 2017 and an M.A. in English Literature in 2025. Her master’s thesis examined how certain contemporary works of science fiction utilize simulation and multiverse theory to provoke and respond to radical existential nihilism, arguing how nonsense, play, and wonder are uniquely equipped to disarm nihilistic thinking, transforming the very forces that threaten meaning into catalysts for its regeneration. 

Alongside her academic work, Yarden is a performance artist working at the intersection of autobiographical performance, physical theatre, and text. Trained at the School of Visual Theater in Jerusalem, she has performed with improvisational dance and theatre groups for over twelve years. Her solo works, including No Point in a Finger (2019), Death by Thesis (2023), and Libertà Ricreata (2025/26), draw on lived experience and explore how art and live performance can retell stories of confinement and set the path towards the reclamation of freedom and the recreation of meaning - themes closely tied to her research.

Yarden has spent over a decade teaching English as a foreign language to students of all ages, online and in person. As a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant, Yarden looks forward to teaching Hebrew at Colgate University’s Jewish Studies Program, sharing her love of language, storytelling, and Israeli culture with students under the supervision of Professor Daniella Doron.

Dr. Yoav Goldstein was awarded a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship to pursue his project, “Major Choices: Priorities Behind American College Students’ Decisions Across Generations.” The project studies how meaning-related motives and prosocial preferences shape educational choices. It moves beyond the traditional focus in economics on expected earnings. Using comprehensive survey data on millions of American college students from the 1960s to the present, Yoav will examine how students’ pecuniary and non-pecuniary goals have evolved over time, how these goals differ across cohorts and groups, and how they shape college major choices. The project will also examine the broader implications of these patterns for occupational sorting and economic inequality.

Yoav received his bachelor’s degree in PPE (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics) and his master’s degree in economics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He completed his PhD in economics at Tel Aviv University under the supervision of Professor Analia Schlosser. His dissertation studies field specialization in higher education, focusing on how students choose their fields of study and how these choices shape economic and civic outcomes. In a secondary research agenda in health economics, Yoav examines physician decision-making in preventive care and its implications for healthcare quality. His work combines large-scale administrative and survey data with causal inference methods.

Dr. Yosef Spiezer was awarded a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship to conduct research on the rural landscape of Judea during the Hellenistic and Hasmonean periods, focusing on continuity and change in settlement, economy, and Jewish identity in the Land of Israel. During his Fulbright year, he will be based at Yeshiva University, with an additional affiliation at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Yosef is an archaeologist, historian, licensed tour guide, and field educator from Jerusalem, where his family has lived for seven generations. His research focuses on ancient Judea and Jerusalem, especially during the Hellenistic, Hasmonean, Second Temple, Roman, and Byzantine periods. His work integrates archaeological surveys, excavation data, historical sources, and GIS-based spatial analysis to study rural settlement, ancient roads, agricultural landscapes, pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the Jerusalem Temple, material culture, and Jewish identity.

He completed his PhD in Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology at Bar-Ilan University. His dissertation examined the rural hinterland of Jerusalem during the Hasmonean, Roman, and Byzantine periods. Alongside his academic work, Yosef is active in public Jewish and Zionist education. He is the founder and educational director of Israel Mibifnim Educational Institute and Israel-2GO Heritage and Archaeology Tours, and previously served as a member of the Jerusalem City Council, including on the Education and Heritage Committees.

Dr. Yotam Cohen was awarded a Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship to pursue his research project titled “Modeling the Molecular Pathways Linking Diet, Microbiome, and Cancer Metabolism through Computational and Experimental Flux Analysis.” In his research, Yotam will develop a predictive model of dietary metabolite flux that connects food composition, microbial metabolism, host biochemistry, and tumor physiology. By combining computational modeling, isotope tracing, and experimental cancer models, he aims to build a mechanistic map linking the chemistry of diet to the biology of disease, laying the foundation for predictive, personalized nutrition strategies in oncology. 

During his PhD at the Weizmann Institute of Science, under the supervision of Professor Eran Elinav, Yotam studied how diet and the gut microbiome jointly shape human metabolism and health, combining computational modeling with human clinical research. In 2023 he was awarded the Clore scholarship for Outstanding Doctoral Students for his achievements. His doctoral work spanned metabolic modeling of dietary-molecule breakdown by the microbiome, personalized nutrition, and microbiome-based therapeutics, bridging computational and experimental biology. He co-authored studies on the person-specific metabolic effects of non-caloric sweeteners and on vaginal microbiome transplantation for recurrent bacterial vaginosis.

Lev-Sagie A*, Goldman-Wohl D*, Cohen Y*, …, Elinav E: Vaginal microbiome transplantation in women with intractable bacterial vaginosis. Nat Med 2019

Suez J*, Cohen Y*, …, Segal E, Elinav E: Personalized microbiome-driven effects of non-nutritive sweeteners on human glucose tolerance. Cell 2022

Cohen Y. & Borenstein E. “The microbiome’s fiber degradation profile and its relationship with the host diet.” BMC Biology, 2022.

Dr. Yotam Feldman was awarded a Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship to pursue his research project titled “Taming Exponential Scaling in Computational Quantum Dynamics using SAT Solving and Model Checking.” The goal is to use new combinatorial optimization techniques to improve computational solutions to some of the most fundamental problems in quantum phenomena, with applications to electrochemistry and heterogenous catalysis.

Yotam did his PhD in computer science at Tel Aviv University, working with Professor Mooly Sagiv and Professor Sharon Shoham on program analysis and formal verification. His thesis (ETAPS Dissertation Award 2023) uncovered surprising theoretical connections between modern verification algorithms and machine learning theory. Yotam then switched to computational chemistry as a Schmidt Science Fellow (postdoctoral) working with Dr. Barak Hirshberg in the School of Chemistry at Tel Aviv University. There he worked primarily on algorithms for capturing quantum phenomena originating from bosonic exchange in path integral molecular dynamics simulations.

Selected publications:

Yotam M. Y. Feldman, Barak Hirshberg. “Quadratic Scaling Bosonic Path Integral Molecular Dynamics”. J. Chem. Phys. 159, 154107 (2023). J. Chem. Phys. Best Paper by an Emerging Investigator 2023.

Yotam M. Y. Feldman, Mooly Sagiv, Sharon Shoham, and James R. Wilcox. 2022. “Property-directed reachability as abstract interpretation in the monotone theory.” Proc. ACM Program. Lang. 6, POPL, (January 2022)

Yotam M. Y. Feldman, Artem Khyzha, Constantin Enea, Adam Morrison, Aleksandar Nanevski, Noam Rinetzky, and Sharon Shoham. 2020. Proving highly-concurrent traversals correct. Proc. ACM Program. Lang. 4, OOPSLA, Article 128 (November 2020)

Zohar Baranovitch graduated with honors from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in screen-based arts with a focus on documentary video and new media. Her works have been presented both nationally and internationally. She also served as assistant director to Oscar-nominated filmmaker Uri Barbash on a feature-length documentary.

As a Fulbright Fellow, Zohar will pursue a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in design and technology at Parsons School of Design in New York, where she will explore creative technologies as both material and medium for new modes of expression. She aims to create works that transcend traditional boundaries of production and exhibition, expanding possibilities for making and engaging with work by, about, and alongside individuals from diverse backgrounds and communities.

Alongside her artistic practice, Zohar is deeply engaged in community organizing. Since 2020, she has been volunteering as a project manager with the Culture of Solidarity initiative in Tel Aviv, supporting marginalized communities across the region. During the ongoing war, she coordinated the Jewish-Arab Emergency Relief Center in the Bedouin city of Rahat and in unrecognized villages in the Negev.