Achievements & Awards

2013 

• Histochemistry: Prof. Yaron Shav-Tal of the Mina & Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences, was awarded the Robert Feulgen Prize for the year 2013, for his outstanding contributions to quantify gene expression in single cells by histochemistry.



• Engineering: Dr. Avi Zadok, of the Faculty of Engineering and member of the Nanophotonics Center at the Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials, received the prestigious Krill Prize for Excellence in Scientific Research, granted by the Wolf Foundation to Israeli returning scientists.



• Fiction: Prof. Evan Fallenberg, Director of Fiction at the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at BIU's Department of English, was awarded a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (US) for a month-long writing residency at the Vermont Studio Center this fall.



• Literature: Prof. Murray Roston’s recent book,  The Comic Mode in English Literature, which suggested a new theory for the way comedy functions, has just been selected in the annual review of the prestigious journal Choice as an “Outstanding Academic Book of 2012”.




• Medicine: Prof. Israel Amirav, of BIU's Faculty of Medicine in the Galilee and a pediatric pulmonologist at the Ziv Medical Center in Safed, was awarded the top prize for research at the CIPP International Congress on Pediatric Pulmonologist in Bangkok, Thailand. 

• Appointments: Prof. Jeffrey Perl, of BIU's English Department, was appointed as member of the New Center for  Humanities Innovation at the University of Durham in England.

2012 

• Chemistry: Prof. (Emeritus) Aharon Gedanken of the Department of Chemistry won the Israel Chemistry Society Award.



• Creative Writing: Joan Leegant, Visiting Writer in the Shaindy Rudoff Master's Program in Creative Writing, won the 2012 Moment Magazine Fiction Contest with her story "Roots" and the Nelligan Prize for Fiction for her Jerusalem story, "Beautiful Souls."  



• Computational Neuroscience: Prof. Moshe Abeles of the Gonda Brain Research Center received the 2012 Golden Neuron/Valentino Braitenberg Award at the Bernstein Conference on Computational Neuroscience in Munich.  



• Israel Science Academy: Dr. Sharon Aronson-Lehavi of BIU's Department of Comparative Literature, was chosen for membership in the Young Researchers' Forum of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.



• Brain Reseach : Dr. Lior Appelbaum of the Gonda Brain Research Center and Faculty of Life Sciences won an USA-Israel Bi-national Science Foundation Grant (BSF) for his work "Functional connectivity in hypothalamus circuits", and a Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (NARSAD) Young Investigator Grant for the work: Live imaging of structural synaptic plasticity in fish models of sleep and mental disorders.



• Engineering: Prof. Ephraim Zehavi of the Faculty of Engineering was elevated to IEEE Fellow, thanks to his contributions to pragmatic coding and bit interleaving. Prof. Zeev Zalevsky of the Faculty of Engineering, was elevated to the IEEE's most prestigious status of Senior Member.  




• ISF Grant:  Several faculty members at BIU's Gonda Brain Research Center won an Israel Science Foundation Grant (ISF) this year.  Dr. Gal Chechik won for his work "Spatio-temporal patterns of the mammalian neural transcriptome". Dr. Alon Korngreen won for his work titled "Magnetic stimulation of cellular and synaptic elements of the CNS."   Prof. Eva Gilboa-Schechtman , Prof. Eli Vakil and Prof. Aron Weller. all also of BIU's Department of Psychology, won for their work "Self-evaluation in social anxiety",  "Specific procedural Learning difficulties among individuals with developmental dyslexia: the effects of modality and nature of stimuli", and "Epigenetic programming and reprogramming of hypothalamic mechanisms that regulate feeding and obesity" respectively.   

• Publication: Dr. Raz Chen-Morris of the Program for Science, Technology and Society, won the Selma V. Forkosch Prize for the best article published in the Journal of the History of Ideas, for his article "Baroque Optics and the Disappearance of the Observer: From Kepler's Optics to Descartes' Doubt." 

•  Archaeology: Prof. Aren Maeir, of BIU's Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology and Director of the Tel Es Safi Excavation, was appointed Corresponding Member of the German Archaeological Institute.

• Drug Administration: Prof. Jonathan Rabinowitz, of BIU's School of Social Work, was appointed as member of the FDA Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee, which reviews and evaluates data concerning the safety and effectiveness of marketed and investigational human drug products for use in the practice of psychiatry and related fields.

• Nanotechnology: Prof. Zeev Zalevsky, of the Faculty of Engineering, won the first "Young Investigator Award in Nanosciences and Nanotechnology" for his major contributions in nanophotonics. 

• Jewish Thought: Prof. Hananel Mack of the Department of Talmud and Jewish Oral Law, was honored with The Bialik Prize for "Jewish thought", given by the municipality of Tel Aviv, for his book "Rabbi Moshe HaDarshan".
  
  

  2011 

• Chemistry: Prof. Doron Aurbach, of the Department of Chemistry and the Institute for Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials, is the recipient of the 2011 ICS Prize of Excellence, for his seminal research on non-aqueous electrochemistry, development of rechargeable magnesium batteries, and for the development of novel spectro-electrochemical tools for the study of reactive electrochemical systems.

  Mathematics: Dr. Reuven Cohen, of the Department of Mathematics, was among the winners of the 2011 Krill Prize for Excellence in Scientific Research.

  Medical Research: Prof. Zeev Zalevsky, of Bar-Ilans Faculty of Engineering and Director of the Nano Photonics Center at the Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials (BINA), was awarded the prestigious "Leon and Maria Taubenblatt Prize for Excellence in Medical Research" for the academic year 2010/2011 for his research on Multi-Functional Bio-Medical Micro Probe.
   

  Life Sciences: Prof. Yosef (Yossi) Steinberger, of the Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences, is the recipient of a Professional Achievement Award from the Soil Ecology Society (SES). The prize was awarded at the 2011 SES meeting, held at the University of British Columbia.

  L'Ordre des Palmes Académiques: Prof. Rami Benbenishty, of the School of Social Work, was Knighted by the French government to the Ordre des Palmes Académiques (Order of Academic Palms), which recognizes the accomplishments of for academics, cultural and educational figures.

  Fullbright Fellowships: Robby Nadler and Jacob Newberry, both from BIU's Creative Writing Program, have been awarded Fulbright Fellowships.  Their projects include documenting (in poetry) the GLBT community in Israel, and interviewing contemporary Christian pilgrims in Israel, respectively.

  Lifetime Achievement Award: Prof. Yosef Steinberger, of the Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences, and Executive Board Member of the Israel Society of Ecology and Environmental Sciences (ISEES), received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Soil Ecology Society.

  Prof. Steinberger is the Terrestrial and Soil Ecology lab at Bar-Ilan.

  UN Appointment: Prof. Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, Director of the Ruth and Emanuel Rackman International Center for the Advancement of Women's Status at Bar-Ilan University, was reelected as the Vice-President of the UN experts Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

  Material Science: Prof. (Emeritus) Aharon Gedanken and Prof. Doron Aurbach, both of the Bar-Ilan Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials (BINA), were included in the ISI International list for Highly Cited Researchers in the field of Material Science. They were the only Israeli scientists to be included in this prestigious list in the year of 2011. 

  Optical Technology: Prof. Zeev Zalevsky, of the Faculty of Engineering, has received the international SAOT (School of Advanced Optical Technologies) Research Award for 2011.  The Research Award in Optical Technologies is an international prize bestowed annually by the German Federal and State governments through the Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU) in Germany, to an outstanding young scientist with a proven record in the field of optics, photonics and optical technologies. In addition to the prize itself the award laureate receives the formal status of a Guest Professor in the Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU).  

  Medical Devices: Bar-Ilan researchers developed a medical device enabling doctors to monitor, in real time, tissue viability in patients who are hospitalized in intensive care units or under surgical procedures. The rights to the device were recently purchased by Critisense.

  Chemistry: Dr. Arie Lev Gruzman of the Chemistry Department received an award for his work with EFSD, the European foundation for Diabetes research.

  The Allon Fellowship: Dr. Erez Lavanon of the Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences and Dr. Ori Aronson of the Faculty of Law were both awarded the Alon Fellowship for 2011. 

  Medical Grants: Recipients of the 2011 Joint Bar-Ilan University & Tel Hashomer (Sheba) Medical Center Grant - Prof. Ron Goldstein, Prof. Ramit Mehr, and Dr. Cyrille Cohen, all from BIU's Faculty of Life Sciences.

FOR ACHIEVEMENTS AND AWARDS FROM EARLIER YEARS CLICK HERE