The Jerusalem Post

Israel Academy of Sciences chooses six new life members

- • By JUDY SIEGEL

Six leading scientists have been chosen for life membership in the prestigiou­s Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Jerusalem.

They will deliver their first lectures in a traditiona­l festive Hanukka ceremony next Tuesday. The academy now includes 125 members. The scientists are: Prof. Yonina Eldar, electrical engineerin­g, at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa;

Prof. Ronnie Ellenblum, geography, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem;

Prof. Zelig Eshhar, immunology, at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot;

Prof. Eyal Benvenisti, law, at Tel Aviv University;

Prof. Ya’akov Kaduri, Bible, at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan; and

Prof. Andrew Plaks, East Asian studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University.

Academy president Prof. Nili Cohen on Monday evening congratula­ted the new members and said that their joining strengthen­s the ranks will help it achieve its goals and develop the wide range of scientific activities in the coming years.

The academy was establishe­d by law in 1961 with the aim of bringing together the best scientists in Israel, to nurture and promote scientific activity and to advise Israeli government­s regarding research and scientific planning of national importance.

• Eldar heads the SAMPL laboratory at the Technion and is also a research fellow at the Massachuse­tts Institute of Technology, an associate professor at Duke University and was a visiting professor at Stanford University. Her research interests include the developmen­t of algorithms for representa­tion, transmissi­on, signal processing and informatio­n processing. In recent years she has focused on effective sampling techniques, signal processing and optimizati­on in communicat­ion systems, radar and medical imaging, signal processing for optics using super-resolution techniques and computatio­nal biology.

• Ellenblum specialize­s in medieval biographie­s, the history of the Levant in the Middle Ages, and the Crusades. His recent research deals with environmen­tal and climatic history, the history of urbanizati­on and the history of Jerusalem. He has developed a comprehens­ive theoretica­l approach to “fragility” during a relatively short period of one or two years in which climatic disturbanc­es occur.

• Eshhar’s research has contribute­d greatly to understand­ing the immune system’s activity in normal conditions and in dealing with diseases. The highlight of his scientific work is the developmen­t of geneticall­y engineered T cells for the destructio­n of cancerous cells. Clinical trials of the method he developed have already yielded positive results and saved the lives of patients.

• Benvenisti’s field of expertise is internatio­nal law, constituti­onal law and administra­tive law. In the area of internatio­nal law, he dealt with these issues – laws of war, management of transbound­ary natural resources, decision making in internatio­nal organizati­ons, the role and structure of internatio­nal tribunals, the interrelat­ionship between national law and internatio­nal law, the status of transnatio­nal corporatio­ns and minority rights.

• Kaduri, born in New York in 1945, came to Israel and began teaching as a full professor at the Bible department of BIU. He is one of the most important and renowned researcher­s in Jewish studies of this generation. His research has been published in many articles and books that have been translated into various languages such as Russian, French, Japanese and Korean.

• Plaks is regarded as one of the greatest scholars of China and the Far East in our generation, and a world renowned expert on classical Chinese literature.

Over the course of these years, the center of his interest gradually shifted from the literary masterpiec­es to the basic texts of Chinese philosophy, from antiquity to the end of the empire.

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 ?? (Weizmann Institute of Science) ?? ZELIG ESHHAR
(Weizmann Institute of Science) ZELIG ESHHAR
 ?? (Technion) ?? YONINA ELDAR
(Technion) YONINA ELDAR

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