Researchers

Dr. Roee Admon is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Psychological Sciences, University of Haifa. His research focuses on the characterization of the neuro-psychological mechanisms that underlay stress vulnerability and resilience in humans. His studies integrate behavioural, psychological, physiological, endocrinological and neural (brain function and structure) measures of stress responsivity, among healthy as well as psychopathological populations.
Dr. Admon has already received numerous awards and recognitions, including the prestigious Alon Scholarship from the Israeli Council for Higher Education, two Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (Formerly NARSAD) Young Investigator Awards and many more. He has also published more than 50 papers on the topic of the neural correlates of trauma and stress in humans, many of which in top journals including PNAS, American Journal of Psychiatry, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Nature Communication and more.

Related Pages:
www.hevra.haifa.ac.il/stress-psychopathology

Roee Admon, Ph.D.
Senior Lecturer, School of Psychological Sciences, University of Haifa
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Lab website: www.hevra.haifa.ac.il/stress-psychopathology
Tel: Office 04-8240964 (52964); Lab 04-6146241

Neurobiology ; Psychology

Prof. Irit Akirav is director of the Learning and Memory lab in the University of Haifa's Department of Psychology, and chair of the Department of Psychology.

Her research focuses on the involvement of the endocannabinoid system in stress, memory and plasticity.

One of the main interests in the lab is studying the therapeutic potential of cannabinoids for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and other stress-related disorders.

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 Prof. Ofer Arazy is an associate professor at the Department of Information Systems at the University of Haifa. He holds a BSc and MBA from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and a PhD from the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada.

His research interests are in the areas of knowledge management and computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW). For his research he employs a wide range of research methods, from design science to behavioral research. His research has been supported by various funding agencies and external sources. Prof. Arazy's work has appeared in: MIS Quarterly (MISQ), Information Systems Research (ISR), Journal of MIS (JMIS), Journal of the AIS (JAIS), among others; and he is the recipient of the AIS Best IS Publication of the Year Award. He currently serves on the editorial board of MIS Quarterly (MISQ) and Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIST).

Prior to his academic career, Prof. Arazy held various positions in industry, including operations manager for the software development company Jacada.

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Human Biology; Faculty of Natural Sciences 

Research Areas: Immunology, Inflammation and its resolution, fibrosis, macrophage biology, lipid mediators, chemokines, signal trunsduction.

Prof. Amiram Ariel is head of The Laboratory for Molecular Pathways in the Resolution of Inflammation  at the University of Haifa.

He received his BSc in Biology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and his MSc and PhD from the Department of Immunology at the Weizmann Institute of Science.
Prof. Ariel received the Rothschild Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Rothschild Foundation and the McDuffie award from the American Arthritis Foundation for his postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School, Boston. During this period, he discovered a novel mechanism of chemokine clearance through binding to receptors expressed on apoptotic cells during the resolution of inflammation.

Prof. Ariel established a new Immunology Laboratory at the University of Haifa where he was appointed senior lecturer from 2007. He has received several competitive research and equipment grants from the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) and the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF), the Rosetrees Trust and the Wolfson Foundation. He is chair of the Department of Human Biology since October 2014 and of the Departments of Biology and Medical Sciences at the University of Haifa since October 2016. He is secretary/vice president of the Israeli Immunological Society since December 2016.
Prof. Ariel studies novel molecular and cellular effectors in resolving inflammation, with emphasis on the clearance of apoptotic neutrophils by resolution phase macrophages. His studies are aimed at uncovering pro-resolving pathways and harnessing it for the treatment of inflammatory, autoimmune and fibrotic disorders.

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Professor Gil Atzmon is currently an Associate Professor of Epigenetics and Genomics in the Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Haifa, Israel. A graduate in Population Genetics from Hebrew University, he completed his fellowship in Human Genetics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine where he then joined as a faculty and rose to the rank of Associate Professor. At this point, he joined the University of Haifa with the rank of Associate Professor. As Associate Professor of Epigenetics and Genomics of Aging/Longevity at the University of Haifa, Prof. Atzmon's focus is in a new and challenging field involving the role of epigenetics in diseases, aging and longevity. The foremost focus of Prof. Atzmon's research career has been the understanding of the association of the whole genome to disease, performance, health and longevity.

Dr. Guy Avni is a faculty member at the Computer Science department of the University of Haifa.

His research belongs to the field of Formal Methods. Specifically, he studies game theory and in particular games on the border between algorithmic game theory, AI, and formal methods. In addition, he studies applications of reactive synthesis and in particular synthesis in combination with machine-learned systems.

He obtained his PhD at the Hebrew University in 2016 and spent four years as a postdoc at IST Austria.

Website:
https://sites.google.com/view/gavni

Sarit Avrani is head of the Aquatic Microbial Interactions Lab in the Department of Evolutionary and Environmental Biology and the Institute of Evolution, University of Haifa.

She received a PhD in Biology from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, where she also had her postdoc.
She was the recipient of the Wolf Foundation prize for M.Sc. students in 2006 and the Aly-Kaufman Fund Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2015-2017.

The focus of her lab is the interactions between bloom-forming cyanobacteria and the viruses (phages) that infect them.

Website: saritavrani.wixsite.com/saritavrani-lab

Ofira Ayalon, full Professor - Dept. of Natural Resources and Environmental Management, University of Haifa
Senior Researcher, Head of Environment Cluster Samuel Neaman Institute, Technion, Haifa

Her research topics involve a wide range of activities related to environmental research and policy implications. The studies have served as a model for nationally recognized, updated energy and environmental activities for a variety of academic and public bodies that promote environmental policy in Israel. The resulting reports are submitted and jointly followed-up in cooperation with the Ministries of Finance, National Infrastructure and Environmental Protection, as well as other relevant government bodies.

The research subjects include Energy policy and management; Waste management and reduction of food loss; Agriculture and the environment; Business opportunities in environmental technologies (clean-tech; Reducing transportation-related air pollution. Recent research topics include Mitigation of greenhouse gases as well as Adaptation to climate change.

Prof. Ofira Ayalon has been awarded the 2018 Michael Landau Prize for Sciences and Research in the field of Sustainability.
The committee found that Prof. Ayalon’s work has made important scientific contributions to sustainable developments in Israel and globally.

Website: https://nrem.haifa.ac.il/?page_id=804&lang=en&csrt=16307960933243243746

Dr. Banai Karen heads the Auditory Cognition Lab in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders.

She is interested in auditory cognition, learning and plasticity across the lifespan.

Research in the lab focuses on:

1) The role of perceptual learning in the recognition of speech under adverse listening conditions (e.g., rapid or noisy speech).

2) Preceptual learning in typical and atypical langauge development.

3) The implications of age-related changes in hearing and learning to hearing rehabilitation.

4) Perceptual learning in participants with language and hearing impairments and following hearing rehabilitation.

Related Pages:
Lab website
Personal website 

Prof. Edi Barkai is Dean of the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Haifa. He has held senior academic positions in the University of Haifa’s Department of Biology and Sagol Department of Neurobiology.

He obtained his PhD in Biology (Neurobiology) from Ben-Gurion University in the Negev and completed his postdoctoral research in Neuroscience at Harvard University.
Prof. Barkai’s major fields of interest lie in cellular neurophysiology, neurobiology of learning and memory; and aging-related learning deficits.

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The Laboratory of Brest Cancer Dormancy and Metastasis,
The Department of Human Biology, Faculty of Natural Sciences

Research Area : Breast Cancer Recurrence

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Smadar Ben-Tabou de-Leon is head of the Biological Regulation and Evolution lab in the University of Haifa’s Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences.
She received a BSc in Physics and Computer Science and MSc and PhD in Physics from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 2004-2011 she was a post-doctoral researcher at the division of Biology at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). She was the recipient of the Rothschild Fellowship in 2004 and the Human Frontier Science Foundation fellowship for in 2005.

Her lab investigates the genetic code that controls embryo development and the evolution of this code. She contributed to the understanding of the gene regulatory networks that drive skeleton formation in the sea urchin embryo. She revealed the similarity between this network to the one that drives blood vessel formation in humans, demonstrating a co-option of an ancestral developmental program into a novel use.

Ilana Berman- Frank is the current Director of the Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences (Haifa U), and the Head of the Aquatic Ecology and Biological Oceanography Laboratory at the department of marine biology at the Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences.
Ilana received her PhD in Environmental Sciences from Bar-Ilan University and the Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research (IOLR) for research done on Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee, Israel). Following her post-doctorate at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University, NJ (USA), Ilana served as the head of Aquatic Ecology and Biological Oceanography Laboratory at the Mina and Everard Faculty of Life Sciences at Bar- Ilan University.

Her research uses both field and laboratory approaches to explore how organisms forming the base of the aquatic food-webs respond to environmentally relevant changes, and how they influence bio-geochemical cycling of carbon and nitrogen. Ilana’s research spans from local to global scales in diverse environments including the Mediterranean, Red Seas, and the South Pacific Ocean.
She has served as President of the Israeli Association of Aquatic Sciences; Chair of the Education Committee of the Mediterranean Research Center of Israel (MERCI; Co-Chair of the International Group of Aquatic Primary Productivity (GAP); member of the Board of Directors for "EcoOcean" and other local and international capacities promoting marine sciences.

Personal Webpage:
https://www.ilanaberman.com

David Bodoff earned his Phd in Information Systems at the NYU Stern School of Business.

He has held faculty positions at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Seoul National University.

He is now Head of the Department of Information and Knowledge Management at the University of Haifa, as well as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Business Administration.

Director of the Tauber Bioinformatics Research Center & Senior Lecturer,
Department of Evolutionary and Environmental Biology, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Haifa

Dr. Leonid Brodsky has been leading bioinformatics research, computational biology and systems biology modeling for over 30 years.
His expertise and methods contributed to numerous scientific discoveries and publications.
He has held multiple leadership positions in academic and commercial settings.
Since 2012 he has been serving as director of the Tauber Bioinformatics Research Center at the University of Haifa and previously served as senior scientist for Quark Biotech Inc. Nes-Ziona, Israel (1998-2004).

(Evolutionary biology; Geography, Environment & Natural Resources Management)

Dr. Anna Brook is a lecturer in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Haifa, and head of the Spectroscopy and Remote Sensing Laboratory. She received her PhD in Environmental Sciences from the Porter School of Environmental Studies at Tel-Aviv University (2011) and completed her post-doctorate at DLR (German Aerospace Center).

Her current research interests include image and signal processing, automation target recognition, sub-pixel detection, spectral models across NIR-MIR regions and study of atmospheric models. The main focus is on the development of data fusion techniques and performing efficient algorithms for integrated data.

Dr. Brook has served as project researcher in the CISS Department of the Royal Military Academy of Belgium; researcher and ground teams head for EUFAR project ValCalHyp (2010), Toulouse, France; and as remote sensing and GIS project coordinator and advisor on "Hyperspectral Technique for Minefields Detection with Airborne Sensors" for LR Group in Angola, Africa.

Website: https://sites.google.com/hevra.haifa.ac.il/abrook/home

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Prof. Yair Censor received his BSc, MSc and DSc degrees in Mathematics from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. From 1977 to 1979 he was Research Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo, NY, USA, and Research Associate with the Medical Image Processing Group (MIPG) there.

Prof. Censor joined the Department of Mathematics at the University of Haifa in 1979, where he holds the rank of Full Professor since 1989. He became Professor Emeritus in 2012, continuing his scientific research work. He is founder and was head (2002-2017) of the Center for Mathematics and Scientific Computation (CMSC) at the University of Haifa. He has served as a visiting professor at leading universities around the world, including the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (USA); Linköping University (Sweden); the Instituto de Matematica Pura e Aplicada (Brazil); the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School (USA); the Beijing International Center of Mathematics, School of Mathematical Sciences, Peking University (China); The Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY, USA) and the Loma Linda University (CA, USA).

Prof. Censor works in Computational Mathematics where his main fields of interest include optimization theory (mathematical theory and development of algorithms); linear algebra and convex analysis (large and sparse systems of linear and nonlinear equations or inequalities); numerical analysis; inverse problems; optimization theory techniques in image reconstruction from projections and in intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT); algorithms for parallel computing; and iterative methods in matrix balancing, transportation problems and discrete tomography.

He has published over 150 research articles in refereed scientific journals, conference proceedings and as book chapters. He co-authored with S.A. Zenios the book Parallel Optimization: Theory, Algorithms, and Applications (Oxford University Press, New York, NY, USA, 1997). Dr. Censor served as associate editor for the journal IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging from 1992 to 2004.

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Johanna Czamanski-Cohen, Ph.D., ATR LPC (AZ) holds a Ph.D. in Social Work and Health Sciences from Ben-Gurion University. She completed post-doctoral studies in the NCI R25T Cancer Prevention and Control training program at the University of Arizona Cancer Center. Johanna is currently the co-PI with Dr. Karen Weihs at the University of Arizona, of the NIH funded, R01 REPAT study- Role of Emotional Processing in Art Therapy for Breast Cancer Palliative Care Patients: A Mechanistic Study.

Johanna began conducting research after a clinical career as an art therapist working with adults, mainly in Psychiatry. Her research is focused on understanding the salutary effects of art-making, particularly for individuals coping with an illness, such as cancer, or fertility challenges. Furthermore, Johanna is interested in the physiological effect of art-making and the relationship between the use of art for emotional processing and its ability to enhance physical and psychological health. Furthermore, Johanna is focused on developing research on the use of digital tools for art-making and their ability to reduce stress and enhance well being.

Dr. Dattner is a Senior Lecturer in the Haifa University Department of Statistics. His research areas are statistical learning of dynamic systems, measurement error models and statistical analysis of big data.

In his research, Dr. Dattner develops mathematical and statistical theory, methodology and algorithms for inference and prediction in various domains where statistical/machine learning and artificial intelligence are applied, such as biostatistics, epidemiology, biology and engineering.

Website: https://stat.hevra.haifa.ac.il/index.php/en/academic-staff-he/dr-itai-dattner

Prof. Ariel (Arik) Diamant is Research Associate at the Morris Kahn Marine Research Station, Department of Marine Biology, Leon Charney School of Marine Sciences, University of Haifa, Israel.

He obtained his MSC in Oceanography and PhD in Marine Parasitology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,. He was a post doc at the Department of Fisheries and Agriculture for Scotland, Aberdeen. As senior researcher (1986-2017) at the National Center for Mariculture in Eilat (NCM), Israel Oceanographic & Limnological Research, Ltd., he also served as Director between 2007 and 2012. His sphere of expertise encompasses parasitic and microbial diseases of marine organisms in natural populations as well as in marine aquaculture systems. His research interests have focused on fish parasite life cycles, fish and shellfish pathology, marine ecology and disease interactions between aquaculture and the environment.

For over 30 years, he acted as head of the Department of Pathobiology at NCM, leading various national and international research projects and teaching in numerous academic courses at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rechovot, Interuniversity Institute, Eilat and Ben Gurion University campus, Eilat.

Over the years, as visiting scholar at numerous laboratories around the world, including sabbatical tenures at the EPA Marine Environmental Laboratory, Gulf Breeze, Florida: University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia: University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand; Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon; and University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Baltimore, MD. He has authored over 120 peer reviewed publications.
https://scholar.google.co.jp/citations?user=pi7ed24AAAAJ&hl=en
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Arik_Diamant

At the University of Haifa, he is part of team efforts aimed at launching a discipline of environment-friendly, sustainable marine aquaculture on the Israeli coast of the Mediterranean.

Roee Diamant received the PhD from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of British Columbia, in 2013, and the B.Sc. and the M.Sc. degrees from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, in 2002 and 2007, respectively.

From 2001 to 2009, he was working in Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, Israel, as a project manager and system engineer, where he developed a commercial underwater modem with network capabilities. In 2015 and 2016, he was a visiting Prof. at the University of Padova, Italy.

In 2009, he received the Israel Excellent Worker First Place Award from the Israeli Presidential Institute. In 2010 he received the NSERC Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship. Prof. Diamant received two best paper awards, and serves as an associate editor for the IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering.

Currently, he is leading the underwater acoustic and navigation laboratory (ANL) as a senior lecturer (equivalent to assist. Prof.) at the Dept. of Marine Technology, University of Haifa. His research interests are in underwater acoustic communication, underwater navigation, object identification, and classification.

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Assaf Distelfeld's Lab: we study wheat domestication and explore wheat's wild-relatives as a source for wheat improvement.

Website: sites.google.com/evo.haifa.ac.il/distelfeld-lab/home

Prof. Orr Dunkelman is an associate professor in the Computer Science department at the University of Haifa.

His research focuses on cryptanalysis, cryptography, security, and privacy, especially in the context of biometric data. His work in symmetric-key cryptanalysis includes analyzing many ciphers and the introduction of several new cryptanalytic techniques. Prof. Dunkelman has worked on many of the most widely deployed ciphers such as the AES, KASUMI (used in 3G mobile networks), A5/1 (used in GSM networks), and IDEA.

Prof. Dunkelman has published over 80 publications in international venues, including the best paper awards from FSE 2012 and CRYTPO 2012. He has also served on more than 80 program committees, five times as a program chair, is the general chair of EUROCRYPT 2018, and has served on the board of the IACR as well as several other boards and steering committees.

Prof. Dunkelman obtained his PhD in Computer Science in 2006 from the Technion and a BA in Computer Science in 2000 from the Technion.

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(Evolutionary biology; Geography, Environment & Natural Resources Management)

Tzion Fahima is a full professor at the Department of Evolutionary and Environmental Biology and the head of the Laboratory of Plant Genomics and Disease Resistance at the Institute of Evolution in the University of Haifa. Fahima's research interests have focused on the application of plant genomics for characterization, utilization and conservation of wild cereal populations in Israel (mainly wild emmer wheat, Triticum dicoccoides, and wild barley, Hordeum spontaneum). His laboratory is involved in plant structural and functional genomics studies, and population genetics of wild cereals. The genomic  studies include molecular marker development, linkage mapping, quantitative trait locus (QTL) analysis, map-based cloning, and maker-assisted selection of several traits with economic values, such as disease resistance, grain protein and mineral content, and drought resistance. Fahima's lab was involved in the positional cloning of the high grain protein QTL, Gpc-B1, and the high-temperature stripe rust resistance gene, Yr36, both derived from wild emmer wheat. Tzion Fahima is a Corresponding member of the European Cooperative Program for Crop Genetic Resources (ECPGR) Network organized by the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI) of the European Community, a member of the Scientific Board of the Israeli Gene Bank (IGB) for Agriculture Crops, a member of the Coordination Committee of the European Triticeae Genomics Initiative (ETGI), and a member of the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium.

Prof. Fuad Fares completed his DSc studies in the Faculty of Medicine, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, and postdoctoral studies in the Department of Molecular Biology and Pharmacology at the School of Medicine, Washington University, St. Louis Missouri. He founded and directs the Department of Molecular Genetics at Carmel Medical Center and is associate professor in the Department of Human Biology, University of Haifa. He has published more than 75 papers in reputed journals and serves as a member of the Israel Council for Higher Education.

Prof. Fuad Fares is founder and chief scientific officer of biomedical start-up PROLOR BIOTECHNOLOGY, which has genetically engineered a platform that prolongs the lifespan and efficancy of therapeutic proteins in treating deficiencies. 

Prof. Fuad Fares with Dr. Lital Sharvit are in the advanced stages of research leading toward the development of a novel treatment for pancreatic cancer, based on the properties of a mushroom-derived compound that they discovered in a species endemic to Israel.Carmel established CanCurX Ltd. to advance and commercialize this technology. 

Website: https://sciences.haifa.ac.il/he/faculty_pages/פארס-פואד

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Prof. Dan Feldman is a faculty member and the head of the new Robotics & Big Data Labs in the University of Haifa, after returning from a 3 years post-doc at the robotics lab of MIT. 

During his PhD studies at Tel Aviv University he developed data reduction techniques known as core-sets, based on computational geometry.

Prof. Feldman's core-set technology is applicable for solving problems in machine Learning, big data, computer vision IOT and robotics. His research team at the University of Haifa continues to design and implement applications using core-set technologies.

Website: https://cris.haifa.ac.il/en/persons/dan-feldman 

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Dr Hagit Friedman is a specialist in neural development and rehabilitation.
She has PhD in Brain Sciences (Faculty of Medicine, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology,) and MSc in Neurobiology (Hebrew University in Jerusalem).
She decided to devote her knowledge and academic career to the advancement of healthy development of infants and adults who suffer from neurological injury.
Dr Friedman develops computerized tools to support early assessment of neurodevelopmental insults, and clinical tools for early intervention in neurological damage.
She is licensed in neurodevelopment assessment with multiple tools - basic and advanced problem solving level, and Dipl. in TCM Acupuncture and in Infant Aquatics.
Dr Friedman teaches about normal and abnormal brain development in Psychotherapy, Special Education and Psychology.

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Neurobiology ; Psychology

Dr. Inna Gaisler-Salomon received her BA in Biology and Music Performance from the University of California, San Diego. She completed her PhD in Psychobiology at Tel Aviv University under the mentorship of Prof. Ina Weiner, and her post-doctoral fellowship at Columbia University Department of Neuroscience under the guidance of Prof. Stephen Rayport.

She has held a faculty position at the University of Haifa, Department of Psychology since 2009.

She is interested in the molecular basis of psychopathology, particularly in molecular and epigenetic mechanisms underlying cognitive dysfunction that characterizes schizophrenia and related disorders.

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The Molecular Basis for Psychopathology Lab - lab servicesThe Molecular Basis for Psychopathology Lab - lab services

Anat Gesser-Edelsburg, PhD is a senior lecturer (tenure), head of the Health Promotion Program at the University of Haifa’s School of Public Health, and founding director of the Health and Risk Communication Research Center at University of Haifa. Lately she was elected to serve as a member of the university’s senate. Her areas of research include health and risk communication, positive deviance, social marketing, persuasive communication, health-promotion programs, entertainment-education and qualitative research.

Dr. Gesser-Edelsburg is associate editor of Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness journal. Her most recent book, Risk Communication and Infectious Diseases in an Age of Digital Media, was published on 2016 by Routledge Studies in Public Health. She has won more than 20 research grants at a total of $2,200,000, among them TellMe and Asset, two EC-funded research grants. She has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals.

She graduated the Faculty of the Arts at Tel Aviv University with a BA (summa cum laude, 1997) and PhD (with distinction, 2002). For her postdoctorate research (2006) Dr. Gesser-Edelsburg was awarded the Vidal Angel Postdoctoral Fellowship for Research against Hate and Bigotry at the Minerva Center for Human Rights, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Faculty of Law.

Yori (Yoram) Gidron, Prof of medical psychology in the Faculty of Welfare and Health Sciences, Univ of Haifa, Israel.

Prof. Gidron obtained his BA in psychology at university of Haifa, and his MSc and PhD in experimental (health) psychology at Dalhousie univ. Canada (graduated in 1996).

Prof. Gidron is psycho-neuro-immunologist, and conducts researches in cognitive and neuro-modulation of health and diseases.
This includes 4 sub-topics:
1. The role of the vagal nerve in predicting and possibly slowing down cancer, heart disease and stroke.
2. The role of hemispheric lateralization in physical and mental health
3. Health promotion using the psychological inoculation method
4. Can a neuroscience-based method prevent PTSD?

Prof. Gidron has over 115 scientific publications and wrote a book on Behavioral Medicine for Springer. He is a member of the editorial board of four scientific journals including Psych-oncology.

At the present time, Prof. Gidron especially focuses on the therapeutic roles and mechanisms of vagal nerve activation in fatal diseases, is working with 8 countries and strongly believes that health sciences can and should bridge between people and countries for the sake of people's lives and peace.

Prof. Gidron’s 1st domain has led to show the independent prognostic role of the vagal nerve in cancer, and to develop a neuroimmunological model of chronic diseases. This topic has scientific and clinical implications.

The 2nd domain has led to understand how the left hemisphere protects us from adverse effects of stress and how its activity predicts a lower risk of infectious diseases. Those two domains are also relevant to the coronavirus.

The 3rd domain has led to develop and test an automatic computerized psychological inoculation method, which could be used in future to promote the health of many people worldwide.

The 4th domain shows how neurosciences can be the backbone of understanding and possibly preventing mental disorders and shows the essential need to use only evidence-based therapies.

Prof. Gidron also participated in humanitarian missions on the topic of PTSD prevention.

Ehud Gonen is PhD candidate at the Department of Asian Studies at the University of Haifa and a Researcher at Haifa Maritime Policy and Strategy Research Center. Ehud's area of research is OFDI (Outgoing Foreign Direct Investment) from China into the Sea-Port sector under China Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) . Ehud held the position of Senior Fellow Researcher at the Harold Hartog School of Government & Policy, Tel Aviv University (2015–2016). He received an MA in International Relationship from the Hebrew University (2000) and a BA in Economics and Psychology from the University of Haifa (1996).

Ehud served as a Diplomat (Israel Trade Commissioner) to Singapore (2000–2004) and to Australia (2008–2012) as well as the chief economist of the foreign trade administration, Israeli Ministry of Economy (2012–2016). Ehud wrote and published two books: 'The book of TEA' the only book in Hebrew on the rich history and beautiful culture surrounding TEA, and 'DECEMBER' a novel based on real events at the early 90’s in Israel and Eastern Europe. Ehud is the editor of 'Israel Annual Maritime Strategic Evaluation' since 2016.

Website: https://hms.haifa.ac.il/index.php/he/ehud-gonen

Michal Granot, RN, PhD, is an associate professor at the Faculty of Social Welfare & Health Sciences, Department of Nursing, University of Haifa, Israel. She was the Head of the Department and involved in the establishment of the Nursing programs in Bnei-Brak Orthodox College (Mavchar) campuses. Her clinical background as a midwife has shaped her research activity that focuses mainly on pain and women health by investigating the etiology, mechanism, and expression of pain modulation processes. As a member of the Haifa Pain Group at the Laboratory of Clinical Neurophysiology, Rambam Health Care Campus, Prof. Granot collaborate on projects that aim to promote transformational “lab to clinic” studies, encompassing mechanism-based tests that represent pain perception and modulation processing. She devoted part of her laboratory work to the conceptualization of a model that depicts the variability of pain experience and the plasticity of the nociceptive system.

Prof. Granot developed and use experimental-induced pain tests that mirrors inhibitory and facilitatory pain modulation pathways as well as brain activity, which involves in pain perception. She lead and take part in research projects that aim to evaluate and quantify mechanisms involved with normal, as well as altered, pain modulation responses. Her research combined assessment of brain processes during painful events, such as pain-evoked potentials, as well as the autonomic and psych-cognitive aspects of pain. Such advanced psychophysical and neurophysiological approaches enable clinicians and researchers to attain view of an individual's pain as obtained in early acute pain patients, can explain one’s risk to develop chronic pain disorders. Prof. Granot collaborate with well-known key experts in the fields of pain and gynecology with special focus on the domain of chronic pelvic pain disorders that results pain during intercourse and affect the quality of intimate relationships.

She is interest in women’s pain disorders and the mechanisms in which the ovarian hormones modulate pain processing and highlight the effect of cultural, and pain-related personality variables on pain manifestation as well as on health outcomes. She also explore pain complaints among women who were exposed to sexual abuse. Prof. Granot merge theoretical knowledge with current clinical issues and practices that require a multidimensional investigation approach in order to promote personalized medicine, based on the individual’s pathogenesis and needs.

Another aspect of her activity is understanding the phenomenon of absence of pain experience in situations of injury or acute disease. For example, altered pain perception in patients with silent ischemic heart diseases. These diverse studies contain the potential to enable pain clinicians to create evidence-based guidelines for the management of chronic pain conditions, based on individually-tailored pain mechanisms.

Dr. Iris Groman-Yaroslavski is an adjunct lecturer at the Archaeology department and research fellow at Zinman Institute of Archaeology in University of Haifa. She is an archaeologist that specializes in the prehistoric periods of the Near East and the Head of the first use-wear analysis laboratory in Israel. Her specialty is also in the field of experimental archaeology as a tool for reconstruction ancient technologies and traditions. Her laboratory provides teaching platforms with the largest reference collection of experimental tools in Israel. Her laboratory also offers analytical services for a variety of project and research questions for projects outside the University of Haifa.

Irit Hadar is a tenured faculty member (Senior Lecturer) at the Department of Information Systems, Head of the Software Architecture Laboratory at the Caesarea Rothschild Institute for Interdisciplinary Applications of Computer Science, and a member of the Research Center for Cyber, Law and Policy, University of Haifa. Hadar received her Ph.D. from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.

Her main research area is cognitive aspects of requirements engineering, software architecture and design, and their effects of software quality, focusing in recent years on informational privacy and security. She has published papers in software engineering and information systems international journals and conferences (IEEE TSE, CACM, EMSE, JAIS, EJIS, REJ, IST, etc.), has been serving as an organizer and PC member in conferences and workshops (e.g., RE, CAiSE, ICIS), founded and organizes a workshop series on cognitive aspects of information systems engineering (COGNISE), and serves as an editorial board member of the Requirements Engineering journal.

Homepage:
https://sites.google.com/hevra.haifa.ac.il/dr-irit-hadar

Alan Hartman is a senior lecturer at the University of Haifa, Department of Information Systems and an adjunct professor at the Afeka Academic College of Engineering, Department of Service Engineering. He is the industry and public sector liason for the Data Science Research Center at the University of Haifa. His current research is on service design, using IT for ethical innovation and social change, and on algorithmic transparency.

His professional career began at the IBM Haifa Research Lab in 1983. He also spent over 2 years at the IBM India research lab in Bangalore serving as the Services Science, Management, and Engineering (SSME) focal point for the IBM India Research Laboratory. He has also worked at Telstra Research Labs in Australia. Alan has a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Newcastle in Australia, an M.Sc. in mathematics from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, and a B.Sc. in mathematics from Monash University in Australia. He has published over 70 research papers and holds 17 patents.

Prof Hagit Hel-Or is a faculty member in the dept of Computer Science and head of the
Computational Human Behavior Lab. She is an affiliate of the Institute of Information
Processing and Decision Making (IIPDM) in the Department of Psychology and
is on the steering committee of the New Cognitive Science program at the University of Haifa.

Hagit received her PhD in Math and Computer Science from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel,
and  has held visiting scholar positions at Stanford University’s Vision Group in the Department of
Psychology as well as in the Department of Statistics.

Her research interests are in interdisciplinary studies, integrating computer vision and
learning algorithms into Human Behavior studies, Medical and Cognitive Psychology studies.

Related pages :
https://chb.hevra.haifa.ac.il/

Naomi Josman is Professor of Occupational Therapy in the Department of Occupational Therapy, the Faculty of Social Welfare & Health Sciences at the University of Haifa, Israel. She also serves as the associate faculty dean of research. Prof. Josman is an internationally recognized leader, scholar and educator in the area of cognitive rehabilitation.

Her research investigates cognition, metacognition, executive functions and their influence on everyday life. Her work is based on an ecologically valid assessment of cognitive disabilities to performance-based assessments, utilizing innovative methods and tools, inter alia Virtual Reality, for evaluation and intervention.

Her research activities extend to the study of a wide range of populations, including people with Central Nervous System deficits, children with neurodevelopmental deficits, clients with schizophrenia, and elderly people. She has authored over 80 research articles and 10 chapters in edited books and her research has received over $1.2 million funding support.

Prof. Hanoch Kaphzan is head of the “Laboratory for Neurobiology of Psychiatric Disorders” in the Sagol department of neurobiology.

He is a board-certified psychiatrist and a neuroscientist. He received his MD from the University of Tel Aviv, completed his residency in psychiatry at the Rambam Medical Center, and received his PhD in neurobiology from the University of Haifa. In 2007-2012 he was a postdoc at New York University in the center for neural sciences.

Currently, his lab is studying the molecular and cellular basis of neurodevelopmental disorders and the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying neurostimulation. The techniques used in the lab are electrophysiology, two-photon live imaging, confocal imaging, molecular biology, and bioinformatics analyses.

Related pages:
https://hkaphzan.wixsite.com/hanoch

Itzik Klein has received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Aerospace Engineering from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel, in 2004 and 2007, respectively, and a Ph.D. degree in Geo-information Engineering from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, in 2011. He is currently an Assistant Professor, heading the Autonomous Navigation and Sensor Fusion Lab, at the Hatter Department of Marine Technologies, University of Haifa. Itzik serves as an IEEE Senior Member and has exceptional experience in navigation systems and sensor fusion. He has been working on navigation topics for more than 15 years at leading companies in Israel, prior to joining the University of Haifa. His research interests include data-driven based navigation, novel inertial navigation architectures, autonomous underwater vehicles, sensor fusion, and estimation theory.

Doron Kliger is a Faculty Member at the Department of Economics, the University of Haifa, Israel, specializing in Finance and Behavioral Economics. While at the US, he has been associated with the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Kliger is the  Chair of Graduate Studies at Economics Department; Head of the Specialization in Behavioral Economics (joint with the Technion) and the Specialization in Finance; and Academic Member of the Israel Association of Actuaries (ILAA).

Kliger serves as a consultant in economics, finance and accounting issues;  his past employment included auditing and reviewing professional material at the Kesselman & Kesselman (PriceWaterhouseCoopers Israel) CPA office.

Kliger is an Associate Editor at Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (inter alia, co-edited a Special Issue on Empirical Behavioral Finance); Associate Editor at Journal of Economic Psychology, Associate Editor at Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly Journal of Socio-Economics); and Editor at Review of Behavioral Economics.

He has published in a wide range of journals in finance, economics, insurance, and probability, on topics including asset pricing, bond rating, behavioral economics and finance, decision making, industrial organization, and insurance pricing.

Kliger has been awarded the Institute of Certified Public Accountants (at the Ministry of Justice) Medal for excellence in accounting studies (twice); the Israel Knesset (The Israeli Parliament) Appreciation Certificate for excellence in studies (twice); the Institute of Certified Public Accountants Award for Outstanding Achievements in the Auditors Council Examinations; as well as the Fulbright Fellowship, by the United States - Israel Education Foundation.

Website: 
http://kliger.haifa.ac.il

Dr. Simon Korman is a faculty member at the Computer Science department of the University of Haifa.

His research is in the field of Computer Vision, focused on geometry and matching oriented problems, which include establishing visual correspondence, template matching, camera pose estimation, and the recovery of 3D structure and motion in a scene. In particular, he is interested in the application of techniques from machine learning, robust estimation, randomized sampling and sublinear algorithms to such problems.

He received his PhD from Tel-Aviv University, during which he interned at Microsoft Research, Redmond. Following that, he spent four years as a post-doctoral researcher at the UCLA Computer Science department and at the Weizmann Institute Mathematics and Computer Science department.

Prior to his PhD studies, he held the position of Head of Algorithms at IoImage, a startup that specialized in developing intelligent video appliances, with real-time capabilities including detection and tracking of intruders and vehicles as well as other kinds of threat detection in surveillance camera video streams.

Mickey Kosloff is the head of the Signal Transduction and Protein Re-design Lab in the Department of Human Biology at the University of Haifa. Prof. Kosloff graduated with a Chemistry BSc in the Amirim Honors program from the Hebrew University and received his PhD from the same institute under the mentorship of the renowned biochemist Zvi Selinger (both degrees awarded Summa Cum Laude). Prof. Kosloff and Professor Selinger founded a start-up company that developed innovative therapies for cancer tumors driven by damaged molecular switches. After training in computational biology with Barry Honig at Columbia University and work with Vadim Arshavsky at the Duke University Medical Center, Prof. Kosloff returned to Israel in 2012 to the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the University of Haifa.

The research at the Kosloff lab addresses a fundamental challenge in the field of signal transduction – deciphering the “specificity code” for protein interactions. This code determines how the 3D structure of proteins encodes for specific recognition of interaction partners, thereby “wiring together” the signal transduction networks that control how all cells function and communicate. Dis-regulation of these signaling networks underlies most diseases, from neurological disorders, through diabetes, to all cancers. Addressing this challenge also has a direct impact on drug design, leading to new therapeutic avenues: identifying specificity determinants at the 3D structural level enables better tuning of drugs to their specific targets, increasing their efficacy, and reducing unwanted side effects.

To achieve this goal, the Kosloff lab combines the accuracy of biochemical and biophysical experiments with the mechanistic insights and scalability of computational approaches. For the last decade, the lab has been developing innovative computational approaches to map precisely protein specificity determinants at the resolution of individual amino acids, combining them with diverse biochemical and biophysical approaches to test predictions experimentally. Such a multi-disciplinary approach can inform personalized medicine efforts by matching detailed genotypes to functional phenotypes and by providing new tools, not only for studying signaling cascades, but also for developing targeted drugs at the cellular level.

Kosloff lab: http://koslofflab.haifa.ac.il/

Prof. Tsvika Kuflik is an associate professor of information systems, Faculty of Social Sciences

He obtained his B.Sc. ,MSc. (Mathematics and computer Science) and Ph.D. (Kreitman School of Advanced Graduate Studies) from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
Over 20 years of industrial experience in developing real time systems

In the years 2012 – 2015 Tsvi was the Head of the Information Systems Department, at the University of Haifa and currently leads the Digital Humanities B.Sc. Program at the university of Haifa.
Tsvi has an ongoing research collaboration with FBK-irst (research institute in Trento, Italy) and additional European research institutes and universities in the area of Intelligent User Interfaces and their application to cultural heritage.
Tsvi has ongoing grants from the IIA (Infomedia Consortium) and ISF.
Tsvi published over 200 scientific papers, he is the chair-elect of the ACM SIGCHI-IUI community and a distinguished ACM scientist.

Head of the Laboratory for Molecular Neurobiology of Memory

Field of research: Neurobiology ; Psychology

Subject: Molecular and cellular mechanisms of memory formation

Related Pages
MemoDero Ltd.
Treating Fear and Stress Disorders

Information Systems and Knowledge Management

Dr. Joel Lanir is a senior lecturer at the University of Haifa’s Department of Information Systems where he heads the Human-Computer Interaction and Visualization Lab. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. His research interests lie in the general areas of human-computer interaction (HCI) and information visualization, and more specifically, mobile, context-aware computing and the design and evaluation of novel technologies such as augmented reality and more.

Dr. Lanir is an expert in user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design, as well as in the evaluation of interactive computing systems. Over the past years, Dr Lanir has been working on various projects in the area of technology and cultural heritage. Specifically, many projects examine how to design and evaluate novel technology at cultural heritage sites to enhance visitor experience.

Related pages
You and Your Surroundings: Enriching Experiences and Insights in Computer and Live Environments

Photo credit: Ilanit Turgeman

The Department of Human Biology: Faculty of Natural Sciences

Prof. Sarit Larisch was until recently chair of the Departments of Biology and Medical Sciences, and Head of the Apoptosis and Cancer Research Laboratory at the University of Haifa, Israel.

She received her BSc in Biology from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, her MSc (cum Laude) from the Lautenberg Center for General and Tumor Immunology, Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem, and her Ph.D from the same institution. For her PhD research, Prof. Larisch was awarded the Lamas-Foundation Award from the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School. Prof. Larisch received the Fogarty International Research Fellowship Award for her post-doctoral studies at the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda, USA. During this period, she discovered a novel cell death protein, termed ARTS, which is a key protein promoting apoptosis and a tumor suppressor protein.

Prof. Larisch has received several awards, including the Focused Funding Award by Johnson&Johnson and the Hyman Milgrom Award.
She has won a large number of competitive grant awards from the Israel Science Foundation (ISF), US-Israel Binational foundation (BSF), Israel Cancer Association, Israeli Ministry of Health grant, NPF-National Parkinson’s Foundation Award, NIH grant-FIRCA, and others.
Prof. Larisch is listed as the inventor/co-inventor of several patents and patent applications for her discoveries.

Related pages
ARTSaVit Ltd
Revolutionizing the fight against cancer

Dr. Michael Lazar is head of the Laboratory or Applied Geophysics in the University of Haifa’s Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences.

Dr. Lazar’s focus is on applying high-resolution geophysical methods to the shallow subsurface on land and at sea.
He is also working on developing novel methods that overcome problems faced by more conventional geophysical methods such as salinity and moisture.

Rachel Lev-Wiesel, Ph.D. is the Head of the Emili Sagol Research Center for Creative Arts Therapies & The Sagol Lab for Children at Risk. In addition she serves a co-founder of the FAA- Emili Sagol Creative Arts Research and Innovation for Well –being Center at Chulalongkorn University, BKK, Thailand.

She is the founder of the School of Creative Arts at the University of Haifa. Her main research interests are trauma and growth, child abuse, sexual violence, and use of drawings for assessment and therapeutic purposes. On these subjects she published about 180 scientific papers and chapters, and 7 books. At present, with Anima-ey company, and the collaboration of the Ministries of Welfare and Education, and researchers from the world, she develops an Artificial Intelligent system to detect sexual abuse through self-figure drawings.

Website:
Sagol Research and Therapy Laboratory for Children at Risk 

Prof. Tamar Lotan, a specialist in Developmental Biology, is head of the University of Haifa’s Department of Marine Biology and of the department’s Cnidarians Developmental Biology and Molecular Ecology Lab. In 1998 she founded Nidaria Technology Ltd., a biotechnology company developing marine stinger inhibitor, and headed its R&D division. Today the company manufactures and exports patented dual protection products to over 20 countries around the globe. She founded NanoCyte, Inc. (today Starlet Derma), a biotech company leveraging marine extracted nano-injectors for immediate active delivery of pharmaceuticals and cosmetically active compounds, and served as its president and director (2000-2008).
Prof. Lotan’s research has been published in Cell and other leading refereed scientific journals. She has more than 20 patent applications to her name. Prof. Lotan holds BSc and MSc degrees in Biology from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a PhD in Genetics and Biochemistry from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot.

Tal Luzzatto Knaan is head of the functional metabolomics lab in the department of Marine Biology at the Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences at the University of Haifa. 

She earned her BSc in Biotechnology and Environmental Sciences from Tel-Hai Academic College, her MSc in Biotechnology and PhD in Biochemistry from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 

From 2013-2016 she was a Vaadia-BARD postdoctoral fellow at the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California, San Diego in collaboration with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. From 2016-2019 she was a postdoctoral researcher in the department of Marine Biology at the Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences until she joined as a faculty member. 

Tal’s main interests is studying the role of small molecules (metabolites) in marine biological systems, from the basic science and ecological function to the discovery of new chemical structures for biotechnological applications and as potential drug leads.  

Marine Geosciences;  Marine Technologies 

Prof. Yizhaq Makovsky is a faculty member with a shared position at the Strauss Department of Marine Geosciences and at the Department of Marine Technologies (in establishment), University of Haifa. He is a geophysicist specializing on the full scope of offshore exploration and development including: 3D imaging, reservoir characterization as well as seafloor active processes and geohazards.

Prof. Makovsky graduated his BSC (1990) at the Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences, Tel Aviv University, and his PHD (1997) at the Department of Geophysics, Stanford University, CA, USA. From 1998 to 2007

Prof. Makovsky worked as a senior consulting geophysicist with Paradigm (one of the leading software companies in the global oil and gas industry), serving worldwide as an on-site global technology transfer, service and support expert in geophysical imaging and reservoir analysis.

In 2007 Prof. Makovsky joined Prof. Zvi Ben Avraham in establishing the Charney School of Marine Sciences at the University of Haifa, and became the establishing head of the Department of Marine Geosciences (through 2010). Subsequently he established and heads the Applied Marine Exploration Laboratory (AMEL), and has a major role in establishing the Helmsely Center of Deep Sea Research, both at the School.

Prof. Makovsky is a member in an internal committee of the Israeli Academy of Science and Humanities aimed at promoting the academic infrastructure related with the gas and oil EEZ development, and is at the core management group of the National University of Haifa led Israel Mediterranean Sea Research Center consortium.

Prof. Irena Manov is an associate professor at the University of Haifa’s Institute of Evolution. She holds a PhD from the Institute of Influenza, Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, St. Petersburg, USSR and an MD from Ural State Medical Academy of Yekaterinburg, USSR.

Prior to taking her position at the University of Haifa, Prof. Manov has held senior academic positions at the Technion-Israel Institute of Science, Faculty of Medicine; the Department of Microbiology, Ural Agricultural Academy, Yekaterinburg, Russia; the Ural Medical Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering Research Center, Yekaterinburg, USSR; and the Department of Microbiology, Virology and Immunology, Ural State Medical Academy of Yekaterinburg (former Sverdlovsk), USSR.

Prof. Manov is a member of the European Association for Cancer Research, the European Cell Death Organization, the Israel Society for Microscopy, and the International Cell Senescence Association. She has served on the editorial board of the World Journal of Pharmacology and as referee for scientific journals including Cell Death and Differentiation; International Journal of Cancer; Molecular Cancer Therapeutics; Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics; Chemico-Biological Interactions; Hepatology International; Basic and Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology; and Acta Pharmacologica Sinica. She is widely published in peer-reviewed journals, conference proceedings and abstracts.

Her current research interests lie in the mechanisms of cancer resistance in the hypoxia-tolerant mole-rat, Spalax; the role of the cancer microenvironment and mesenchymal stem cells; exploring the unique mechanisms of cellular senescence in the stress-tolerant and long-lived Spalax; and the role of the anti-inflammatory network in life span.

Related pages

SpalRx Ltd.

Novel Horizons in Cancer Treatment and Prevention

Dr. Avi Mendelsohn is the head of the Human Memory Lab at the Sagol Department of Neurobiology, and a faculty member of the Institute for Information Processing and Decision Making (IIPDM) at the University of Haifa. He received his PhD in Neurobiology from the Weizmann Institute of Science, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, NYC.
Dr. Mendelsohn’s research concerns with the conditions that support long-term memory formation, and their physiological and neural underpinnings.

Dr. Osnat (Ossi) Mokryn is faculty in the Department of Information Systems and the director of the Social Media and Networks (SCAN) lab.

Her main research areas are temporal complex networks, social media content, and computer networks. She combines statistical and algorithmic methods to research the processes and mechanisms that govern our online behavior and connections.

In her social media research Ossi utilized social media content to devise hotel recommender system; quantified the emotional experience of the crowd, and devised personal digital signatures for social media users.
Ossi started her academic career in computer networks and is an expert in network protocols, with a recent joint patent with GM in Multi-path TCP. Her current research in compute-networks involves the use of data mining techniques for traffic forecasting in SDN networks.

Osnat (Ossi) Mokryn
Information Systems
University of Haifa
http://scan.haifa.ac.il

Dr. Morick is heading the Marine pathology lab at The Morris Kahn Marine Research Station (MKMRS). Dr. Morick is a veterinarian and researcher with 15 years of experience in marina animals’ medicine. At the MKMRS he is conducting essential, novel studies concerning pathogen emergence and disease transmission between aquatic animals in the easternmost Mediterranean Sea. With the use of cutting-edge technologies, this research is expected to generate original knowledge about marine biology, marine ecology, and public health issues.

Dr. Amir Neori is a Research Fellow at the Morris Kahn Marine Research Station, Department of Marine Biology, Leon Charney School of Marine Sciences, University of Haifa, and at the Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences in Eilat, Israel. He continues here his research at his previous capacity for over three decades at the National Center for Mariculture, Eilat (Israel Oceanographic & Limnological Research, Ltd.). There he led multidisciplinary research in mainly warm-water mariculture, with respect to sustainable aquaculture and related issues.

His degrees were obtained from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, and the University of California San Diego - Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Over the years, Neori went on sabbaticals at the University of Florida, Bar Ilan University, Tel Aviv University, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of Haifa, Wageningen University, The Netherlands, and University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain.

Neori has published over 100 publications, which have been cited in the scientific literature over 7000 times, and which can be located at
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=O0ZEvrwAAAAJ
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Amir_Neori/publications

He plans to help usher in the development and deployment of sustainable mariculture at the Israeli Mediterranean coast and waters and elsewhere.

Hadas Okon-Singer is a faculty member and the head of the Cognition-Emotion Interactions Lab at the Department of Psychology, The Paul and Herta Amir Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Haifa.

She is studying the cognitive mechanisms that impact emotional processing and the neural systems underlying them. In her research, she combines fMRI, EEG/ERP, various kinds of autonomic measures (such as blood pressure and heart rate) and behavioral assessments.

Dr. Okon-Singer received her PhD in neuroscience from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. During her first post-doc at Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, she employed simultaneous recording of fMRI and EEG with novel computational analysis techniques. She pursued her second post-doc at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany. She focused on the neural mechanisms underlying blood pressure reactions to emotion. To target these reactions, she implemented a system for continuous monitoring of blood pressure during fMRI scanning. Among other awards and scholarships, she received the Dusty and Ettie Miller fellowship for outstanding young scholars, the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Career Integration Grant, and the National Institute for Psychobiology in Israel Young Investigator Research Grant.

Lab website:
http://ceilaboratory.wix.com/labsite

Hod Orkibi, PhD, is a certified psychodrama therapist and an Associate Professor (tenured) at the School of Creative Arts Therapies, University of Haifa, Israel. Prof. Orkibi advises M.A. and Ph.D. students, acts as the Chair of the Doctoral Program Committee and has been the Head of international programs and collaborations. His research areas include drama, creativity, and well-being; psychodrama process and outcomes; arts-based community rehabilitation; and systematic reviews. His work has been presented at international conferences and published in international refereed journals.

Prof. Orkibi has been awarded private and public grant funds, including from the Israel Science Foundation, the Ministry of Science and Technology in Israel, the National Insurance Institute of Israel, and the European Union. He serves on the editorial board of the international journal The Arts in Psychotherapy​, the Drama Therapy Review - Journal of the North American Drama Therapy Association, the GMS Journal of Arts Therapies, APA Division 10's journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, and the Academic Journal of Creative Arts Therapies​

Prof. Orkibi was appointed Chair of the Israeli Higher Council for Creative Arts Therapies (2017-2020) and is a member of the Israeli Association for Arts Therapies and the Israeli Association for Psychodrama. He was chosen to represent Division 10 – the Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts – on the American Psychological Association's Council of Representatives (2019-2022). He is also an active member of the International Research Alliance of the NYU Creative Arts Therapies Consortium. His full list of publications can be seen on his Google Scholar profile.

Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Selected Publications
Orkibi, H., Ben-Eliyahu, A., Reiter-Palmon, R., Testoni, I., Biancalani, G., Murugavel, V., Gu, F. (2021). Creative adaptability and emotional well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic: An international study. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. 1-11.

Gavron, T. & Orkibi, H. (2021). Arts-based supervision training for creative arts therapists: perceptions and implications. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 75. 101838, 1-7.

DeWitte, M., Orkibi, H., Zarate, R., Karkou, V., Sajnani, N., Malhotra, B., Ho, R. T. H., Kaimal, G. Baker, F. A., & Koch, S. C. (2021). From therapeutic factors to mechanisms of change in the creative arts therapies: A scoping review. Frontiers in Psychology, 12(2525), 1-27.

Nitzan, A. & Orkibi, H. (2021). “We’re all in the same boat” – the experience of people with mental health conditions and non-clinical community members in integrated arts-based groups. Frontiers in Psychology, 12(757), 1-15.

Kushnir, A. & Orkibi, H. (2021). Concretization as a mechanism of change in psychodrama: Procedures and benefits. Frontiers in Psychology, 12(176), 1-13.

Orkibi, H., Biancalani, G., Bucuţã, M. D., Sassu, R., Wieser, M. A., Franchini, L., Raccichini, M., Azoulay, B., Ciepliñski, K. M., Leitner, A., Varani, S., & Testoni, I. (2021). Students’ confidence and interest in palliative and bereavement care: A European study. Frontiers in Psychology, 12(423), 1-13.

Orkibi, H. (2021). Creative adaptability: Conceptual framework, measurement, and outcomes in times of crisis. Frontiers in Psychology, 11(3695), 1-13.

Ram-Vlasov, N. & Orkibi, H. (2021). The kinetic family in action: an intermodal assessment model. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 71,101750, 1-9.

Nitzan, A. & Orkibi, H. (2020). Stigma correlates in individuals with mental health conditions versus community members enrolled in a nationwide integrated arts-based community rehabilitation program in Israel. Health & Social Care in the Community, 28, 1230-1240

Shafir, T., Orkibi, H., Baker, F. A., Gussak, D., Kaimal, G. (2020). Editorial: the state of the art in creative arts therapies. Frontiers in Psychology, 1-10.

Feniger-Schaal, R., & Orkibi, H. (2020). Integrative systematic review of drama therapy intervention research. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 14(1), 68-80.

Tuaf, H. & Orkibi, H. (2019). Community-based rehabilitation program for adolescents with mental health conditions: A qualitative study protocol. BMJ Open, 9(12), e032809, 1-7.

Orkibi, H. (2019). Positive psychodrama: A framework for research and practice. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 66, 101603. 1-8.

Orkibi, H. & Feniger-Schaal, R. (2019). Integrative systematic review of psychodrama psychotherapy research: Trends and methodological implications. PLoS ONE 14(2), e0212575. 1-26.

Orkibi, H. (2019). Creative arts therapists have lower collective self-esteem but higher job satisfaction than other professionals. Art Therapy, 36(2), 98-102.

Orkibi, H. & Ram-Vlasov, N. (2019). Linking trauma to posttraumatic growth and mental health through emotional and cognitive creativity. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts,13(4), 416-430.

Orkibi, H. (2018). The user-friendliness of drama: Implications for drama therapy and psychodrama admission and training. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 59, 101-108.

Azoulay, B., & Orkibi, H. (2018). Helpful and hindering factors in psychodrama field Training: A longitudinal mixed methods study of student development. Frontiers in Psychology 9(196), 1-10.

Orkibi, H., Azoulay, B., Snir, S. & Regev, D. (2017). In-session behaviors and adolescents’ self-concept and loneliness: A psychodrama process-outcome study. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy 24(6), O1455-O1463.

Orkibi, H., Azoulay, B., Regev, D., & Snir, S. (2017). Adolescents’ dramatic engagement predicts their in-session productive behaviors: A psychodrama change process study. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 56, 46-53.

Orkibi, H. (2016). Highly artistic-social personalities buffer the effects of burnout on career commitment. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 50, 76-83

Azoulay, B., & Orkibi, H. (2015). Four-phase CBN psychodrama model: A manualized approach for practice and research. The Arts in Psychotherapy 42, 10-18.

Orkibi, H. & Bar Nir, A. (2015). Linking collective self-esteem to well-being indicators of arts therapies students and practitioners: Meaning and engagement as mediators. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 45, 26-35

Orkibi, H., Bar, N., Eliakim, I. (2014). The effect of drama-based group therapy on aspects of mental illness stigma. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 41(5), 458-466.

Orkibi, H. (2014). The applicability of a seminal professional development theory to creative arts therapies students. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, 21(6), 508-518.

Orkibi, H. (2012). Students’ artistic experience before and during graduate training. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 39(5), 428435.

Orkibi, H. (2011). Using intermodal psychodrama to personalize drama students’ experience: Two case illustrations. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 45 (2), 70-82.

Prof. Shlomit Paz is the head of university’ Climate and Environmental Sustainability Center as well as the Vise Dean of teaching, The Faculty of Social Science. She is a climatologist investigating the scientific basis of the climate crisis and its impacts on the public health. Prof. Paz is involved in various international, European, Mediterranean and Israeli projects on the current and predicted impacts of climate change. For example, she is a member of the Steering Committee of the MedECC (network of Mediterranean Experts on Climate and Environmental Change) that includes about 650 scientists from 35 states from the Mediterranean and Europe.
In Israel, she is a member of The Israel Climate Forum of The President of the State of Israel and a member of the Climate Committee of The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

Website:
https://sites.google.com/hevra.haifa.ac.il/shlomit-paz/home

Dr. Carlos Peiser Ph.D., Senior Career Psychologist.
Former Head of Career Counseling Center, University
of Haifa and Lecturer at the Educational Counseling,
Department of Education. Now retired.
Developed a Career Counseling popular device in
Israel, based on the typology of John Holland, in
extensive use in with discharged soldiers and young
adults in the last decade.

Information Systems and Knowledge Management

Prof. Mor Peleg is associate professor at the University of Haifa’s Department of Information Systems since 2003, and served as department head in 2009-2012.

She completed her BSc and MSc in Biology and PhD in Information Systems from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. She spent 7 years at Stanford Biomedical Informatics Research.
Prof was awarded the New Investigator Award by the American Medical Informatics Association for her work on clinical guideline-based decision support and is International Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics since 2013. She is an associate editor of the Journal of Biomedical Informatics and a member of the editorial board of Methods of Information in Medicine. Her research interests focus on knowledge representation, decision support systems, and process-aware information systems in healthcare. Currently, she focuses on decision support for patients with multimorbidity and on increasing patients’ compliance to healthcare recommendations via mobile applications. She has over 100 publications and an H-index of 33.
Prof. Peleg was coordinator for the large-scale FP7-ICT MobiGuide project in 2011-2015. She chaired the scientific PC at the Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (2011), and has been co-chair of the annual BPM ProHealth Workshop and the Knowledge Representation for Healthcare Workshop since 2007.

Dr. Roi Poranne is a faculty member in the Department of Computer Science in the University of Haifa. He conducts research at the intersection of computer graphics, digital fabrication and robotics. His main focus is on interactive applications, which require highly efficient optimization algorithms. The methods he developed has been integrated into several open-source and commercial applications in computer graphics. He is currently investigating the use of robotic telemanipulation for assistive care and rehabilitation.

Dr. Poranne obtained hid PhD in 2013 from the Technion and a BA in Mathematics and Physics, also from the Technion.

Professor Dorit Pud was graduated at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in nursing (1982), and received a PhD in Neurophysiology at the Technion (2002), Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, The Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and an additional PhD in Biomedical Science at the University of Aalborg, Denmark (2006).

Prof. Pud main research interest is PAIN. She founded the Human Experimental Pain Research Laboratory at the University of Haifa, and she is the head of the laboratory. Multiple research projects and studies are currently being conducted at the lab, including the supervision of MA theses and Doctoral dissertations. Most of her studies deal with the individual differences in pain perception and analgesic response in humans, using innovative methods and various models to evoke experimental pain.

Prof. Pud has been pursuing these research activities by using two main approaches. The first is employing experimental pain models in healthy subjects and using psychophysical methods in an attempt to better understanding of the experience of pain and the mechanisms behind it. The second line of research is clinical trials, studying the therapeutic effects of individuals who suffer from clinical pain.

Prof. Pud current research interests include: (1) Identifying factors influencing pain perception (e.g., personality traits, demographic characteristics, genetic profile, brain morphology) (2) Understanding the phenomenon of opioid induced hyperalgesia (OIH); (3) Exploring the analgesic efficacy of dopaminergic interventions for pain relief in chronic neuropathic pain patients; (4) Examining the effectiveness and safety of medical cannabis treatment for chronic pain patients.

Prof. Pud published over 70 papers in prestigious peer-review journals and has received research grants from competitive funding sources.

Prof. Avital is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Heath Sciences at the University of Haifa.
He published more than 60 papers (H-index: 28; Citation index: 3028) in leading journals.
In his Ph.D (University of Haifa) research he discovered the effects of exposure to juvenile stress on emotional and cognitive coping abilities in adulthood. He then moved to the Weizmann Institute of Science and continued his research on stress and found the unique role of mineralo- and Gluco-corticoid system in the mechanism of neural plasticity following stress. Starting his interest in translational neuroscience, he also studied and found blood markers for the severity of Schizophrenia symptoms. After joining the Technion (until 2021), he has established the Behavioral Neuroscience lab. Since then, he has been investigating the regulation and dysregulation of attention and social cooperation processes in health and disease, combining state-of-the-art behavioral technologies with molecular and physiological tools. During these studies he has developed a fully computerized social cooperation maze, currently enabling to decipher the genetics of social cooperation and also subserving a groundbreaking collaborative research on the dysregulation of sociability in Autism. These finding and many others were translated and implemented in working dogs, for security purposes.
His ongoing translational research on attention dysregulation has led to a newly EMG-based instrument (patent reg. #63524) and the establishment of a startup company (Mindtension, ltd) that further the R&D and implementing this technology to better diagnose and treat ADHD, ‘circumstantial’ ADHD (e.g. medical residents following workload), and the involvement of the attention system in stress (i.e. PTSD). Avital’s research along the years has been extensively funded by the Israeli ministry of defense, US army/NIH and the ISF.

Avraham (Avi) Raphael Avital, Ph.D
Behavioral Neurobiology lab.
Department of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of social welfare and health sciences.
University of Haifa,
Haifa 3498838, Israel.
Lab: +972-77-8871394
Office: +972-77-8872225; +972-4-6495395
Cell: +972-50-6503361
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Website: https://Sites.google.com/welfare.haifa.ac.il/bnl

Prof. Iris Reinhartz-Berger is currently the head of the Information Systems department at the University of Haifa.

She received her MSc and PhD in Information Management Engineering and her BSc in computer science and applied mathematics, all from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology .

Her research interests include model-based software engineering, conceptual modeling, domain analysis, product lines, and requirements engineering.

Some of her current and previous projects include: Semantic and Ontological Variability Analysis, Cross Product Line Mining, Core Requirements Generation, and Decision Support for Service Adoption and Management in Multi-
Business Organizations.

Website:
https://sites.google.com/hevra.haifa.ac.il/iris-reinhartz-berger

Neurobiology ; Psychology

Prof. Gal Richter-Levin is founder and head of the Haifa Forum for Brain and Behavior, and director of the Integrated Brain and Behavior Research Center (IBBR) at the University of Haifa.

He obtained his PhD in Neurobiology (1992) at the Weizmann Institute, Rehovot, Israel, and after two years as an HFSP postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute for Medical Research, London, UK, he joined the University of Haifa in 1995. Since 2006 he is a full professor both in the Sagol Department of Neurobiology and the Department of Psychology. In 2009-2013 he served as the University of Haifa's Dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences. He was president of the Israeli Society for Biological Psychiatry (2006 – 2008) and president of the Israel Society for Neuroscience (ISFN) (2015-2017). Prof. Richter-Levin is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the National Institute for Psychobiology, and a member of the British-Israeli Science Council. 

Academic Profile
Prof. Richter-Levin has published over 150 scientific papers (H Factor: 47 (Scopus); 54 (Google Scholar)) and has supervised over 50 graduate and postgraduate students.
In 2013 he was awarded The Israeli Association for Biological Psychiatry prize for a lifetime excellence for the mentoring of young researchers in basic science.

He was awarded many competitive research grants, including more recently an award from the Programme of German-Israeli Project Cooperation (DIP) (€ 1,200,000) and an award from the Department of Defense (DoD), USA ($ 1,485,000).    

Research Interests
Prof. Richter-Levin is a world-renowned researcher of the emotional brain, and of stress-related psychopathologies, including anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He has made major contributions to developing novel translational animal models of mood and anxiety disorders, as well as towards the understanding of the role of the emotional brain in traumatic memory and depression.

David Roe, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist, Professor at the Department of Community Mental Health, University of Haifa, Israel and affiliated Professor at Aalborg University, Denmark. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree (Magna Cum Laude) in psychology from Brown University he went on to Columbia University Teachers College where he received his Masters of Philosophy, Masters of Science and Ph.D.. in Clinical Psychology.

His research focuses on the psychosocial processes of recovery from serious mental illness, stigma, Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) and the evaluation of interventions and services. His research has been funded by several local and international sources, including NIMH, Israeli Science foundation, The Israeli Ministry of Health, The Israel National Institute for Health Services Research and Health Policy, the Israeli National Insurance Institution and the Tauber and Rich foundations. Dr. Roe has published extensively and serves as associate editor for the Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal, Journal of Mental Health, BMC psychiatry and Israel Journal of Psychiatry and is on the editorial board of Psychiatry Research, Journal of Clinical Psychology, Psychiatry Research Communications, Stigma and Health, Journal of Clinical Psychology, Psychosis, American Journal of Psychiatric Rehabilitation and Social Welfare (Hebrew).

David Roe, Ph.D
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Neurobiology ; Psychology

Prof. Kobi Rosenblum is the head of the Laboratory for Research of Molecular and Cellular Mechanisms Underlying Learning and Memory (since 2001) in the Sagol Dept. of Neurobiology, University of Haifa, which he has cofounded and chaired for 10 years. The laboratory currently consists of four research associates, four post docs, and five post graduate students. Prof. Rosenblum is also head of the Center for Gene Manipulation in the Brain, University of Haifa, since its foundation in 2009.

In his research, Prof. Rosenblum focuses on molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying learning and memory. In addition, his research aims at gaining insight regarding targets for cognitive enhancement and treatments for brain disease, using advanced methods spanning molecular biology, advanced microscope imaging, electrophysiology, and behavioral assays.

He holds a M.Sc. and a Ph.D. from the Dept. of Neurobiology, Feinberg Graduate School, Weizmann Institute of Science (Cum Laude). Prof. Rosenblum has been a postdoctoral EMBO fellow at the Neuroscience Institute of the MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences, and later a research associate with a Royal Society Fellowship at the same institute. He has co-authored over 70 peer-reviewed scientific papers, three book chapters, four patents in the field of neuroscience.

In 2016, a start-up company, Protekt Therapeutics Ltd., has been established based on his research, in which he serves as the Chief Scientific Officer. Throughout his career, Prof. Rosenblum has been awarded numerous prestigious fellowships, grants, and awards.

Prof. Rosenblum is the president of the European Molecular and Cellular Cognition Society.

Website: https://neurosenblum.haifa.ac.il.

Sara Rosenblum is a full professor in occupational therapy and head the laboratory for Complex Human Activity and Participation (CHAP), with special interest in the characteristics of human daily function. Rosenblum aim to gain better insight into interactions between varied body functions (e.g., cognitive, motor, sensory), activity performance and participation abilities of people faced with functional deficits in everyday life.

A main focus is placed on trying to understand the relationships between brain mechanisms and actual daily functions among varied populations along life cycle. The ICF concepts (WHO, 2001) constitute the frame for description and evaluation of ability and disability in her research. Consequently, her studies concentrate on populations of children and adults with neurodevelopmental and neurological disorders and those with chronic illness whose daily function confrontations have not yet received appropriate expression in research.

Laboratory website:
http://chap.haifa.ac.il

Dr. Orly Rubinsten is a faculty member at the University of Haifa’s Department of Learning Disabilities and Edmond J. Safra Brain Research Center for the Study of Learning Disabilities. She is head of the University’s Language and Numbers Laboratory. 

Her research spans several areas in cognitive neuroscience and she has made scholarly contributions to the fields of numerical neuro-cognition, neurocognitive aspects of attention and learning disabilities, emotions and anxiety. Dr. Rubinsten has been awarded more than $330,000 in research funds and grants, from national institutions including ISF, Israel Ministry of Science and Technology, Rothschild Foundation and Fulbright.
She is an associate editor for Journal of Cognition and has been guest editor for a special issue of Developmental Neuropsychology and for Frontiers in Psychology. She has previously served as a psychologist in Ben-Gurion University’s Committee of Learning Disabilities.
Dr. Rubinsten graduated with a Bachelor’s degree (cum laude) in Behavioral Sciences, a Master’s degree in Rehabilitation Neuropsychology and a PhD in Cognitive Neuropsychology from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. She completed her post doctorate at the Hospital for Sick Children and the University of Toronto, Canada.

Related Pages
New Path for the Treatment of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD): Introducing Novel Neurocognitive Treatment

Amir Sapir is the Head of the Laboratory for Molecular Genetics of Aging and Metabolism

Amir received a B.Sc. in Biology from the Hebrew University and M.Sc. (with honor) and Ph.D. from the Weizmann Institute of technology. After a first post-doctoral position at the Technion, Amir was a post-doctoral researcher in the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) between 2008 and 2001.
In his research, Amir seeks to elucidate the genetic basis of metabolism, aging, and life in extreme environments. Currently, he focuses on understanding how impaired cholesterol metabolism leads to the development of cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and neurodegenerative disease - the three major medical challenges of our time.

Prof. Nir Sapir is a faculty member in the Department of Evolutionary and Environmental Biology and head of the Animal Flight lab. His group deals with ecological, biomechanical, physiological and behavioral aspects of animal flight, primarily of birds.

Using a variety of research methods, including radio, GPS and geolocation telemetry, radar technology, remote sensing and field measurements, his research group studies the causes, mechanisms, patterns and consequences of animal flight. Several applied aspects of our work include the mitigation of collisions between low-flying aircrafts and migrating birds, ecosystem services of aerial insectivores and the conservation of birds in Israel.

Uri Schattner is a senior lecturer in marine geosciences, co-founder and former head of the Dr. Moses Straus Department of Marine Geosciences, and head of the Seismic Interpretation Lab at the University of Haifa’s Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences. He obtained his BSc in Geology and Biology from the Hebrew University in 1998, both MSc (applied Geodesy, 2001) and Ph.D. (Tectonics, 2006) in Geophysics from Tel Aviv University, post-doc at the Geological Survey of Israel (2006) and the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds, UK (2007). His research focuses on plate and salt tectonics, seismic stratigraphy, Earth systems analysis, acquisition processing and analysis of marine geophysical data, structural geology, gravity, magnetics, seafloor morphology. In 2007 he received the Bentor Award from the Fredy & Nadin Herrman Institue of Earth Sciences (Hebrew University, Jerusalem) for writing an excellent paper on the tectonic development ‎of the eastern Mediterranean‎. In 2016 Uri received the Freund Award of the Israel Geological Society (the highest and most respected prize for Earth sciences in Israel) for writing an original and innovative paper on sediment transport in the eastern Mediterranean.

In 2016 Uri invented the Bike-magnetic – a simple and low-cost technique for collecting ground magnetic data on a bicycle. This design improves the efficiency of the regular ground magnetic data collection by ten times. By now, this technique yielded new magnetic data over thousands of kilometers and two papers.

Related Pages:

Seismic Interpretation Lab

https://twitter.com/Seis_Lab

Aviad Scheinin is the Head of the Marine Apex predator Lab, specializing in conservation, behavioral science, and long-term ecological research of coastal dolphins, coastal sharks, rays, and bluefin tuna. We are continuously engaged in developing new sampling protocols and indicators for pelagic megafauna. Emphasis is placed on the function of these species as sentinels of the marine environment and their ability to inform us about human perturbations. We employ photogrammetric measurements using drones and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), active and passive acoustic surveying techniques, mark-recapture methods, underwater observations, and cutting-edge technologies for molecular and stable isotope analyses, e-DNA, and microbiome. Apex predators are important for maintaining the integrity of ecosystems, yet there exists a huge knowledge gap on these predators of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea which we plan to overcome.


Website: https://med-lter.haifa.ac.il/index.php/en/the-team/dr-aviad-scheinin

Naomi Schreuer, Ph.D, OT, has 34 years of experience in rehabilitation as an occupational therapist, mostly among adults with various disabilities in the context of work and education. She is the Head of the Occupational Therapy Department, at the Faculty of Social Welfare & Health Sciences, University of Haifa. Her clinical, research and teaching background emphasize the importance of supportive and accessible environments (social, physical and technological) for effecting participation of people in general (study, work, leisure, mobility in the community), and specifically those with disabilities, older adults and other vulnerable populations. She is also an authorized accessibility expert and specializes in qualitative and mixed method studies.

Efrat Shadmi is Associate Professor at the Department of Nursing at the University of Haifa, Israel. She received her doctoral degree from the department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Prof. Shadmi also serves a senior policy consultant to the Department of Health Policy Planning at Clalit Health Services, the largest Israeli non-for-profit health care organization. As part of her collaborations with Clalit she co-develops and employs big-data risk adjustment systems and predictive algorithms which are used in various interventions targeted at high-risk patients.
Her automated predictive model, the Preadmission Readmission Detection Model and the intervention designed by Clalit to prevent hospital readmissions, was selected by the Commonwealth Fund as one of 10 international projects designed for patients with complex needs.

¹ The Commonwealth Fund International Experts Working Group on Patients with Complex Needs
Expanded and Revised Edition: September 2017. Designing a High-Performing Health Care System for Patients with Complex Needs - Ten Recommendations for Policymakers https://www.commonwealthfund.org/sites/default/files/documents/___media_files_publications_fund_report_2017_aug_roland_10_recommendations_for_complex_patients_revisedexpanded.pdf

Simone Shamay-Tsoory is a Full Professor at the University of Haifa and the head of the Integrated Brain and Behavior Research Center.
She established the Social and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory, where she studies the neural basis of social behavior. Her work is internationally known for its development of a theory on the biology of empathy. Recently she focuses on studying social behavior in real-life interactions using state-of-the-art hyperscanning techniques.

Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Website: https://sans.hevra.haifa.ac.il/home

(Evolutionary biology; Geography, Environment & Natural Resources Management)

Prof. Imad Shams is a faculty member of the University of Haifa’s Department of Evolutionary and Environmental Biology (Faculty of Natural Sciences) and holds a senior researcher position at the University’s Institute of Evolution. His research interests include environmental stress tolerance in subterranean mammals; and adaptations to hypoxia and oxidative stress as requisite for cancer resistance and longevity. 

Prof. Shams previously held a position as research associate at the Ziv Medical Center Research Division in Safed, Israel. He graduated from Lomonosov Moscow State University’s Department of Human and Animal Physiology with an MSc ad BSc in Biology, and completed his PhD at the University of Haifa’s Institute of Evolution under the supervision of Prof. Eviatar Nevo and Prof. Aaron Avivi. Before returning to the University of Haifa as faculty member, he completed three years as postdoctoral associate at Yale University School of Medicine’s Department of Pharmacology.

Ralated pages
SpalRx Ltd.
Novel Horizons in Cancer Treatment and Prevention

 Dr. Lital Sharvit is a PhD graduate from the Department of Evolutionary and Environmental Biology at the University of Haifa. She holds a PhD in Cancer Biology for her work in discovering the anticancer effect of mushroom extract on the growth of human pancreatic cancer cells in vitro and in vivo. Her research interests lie in the general areas of cancer biology, cancer treatment, and nature-derived compounds; more specifically, the use of mushroom derived compounds for the treatment of cancer, mainly pancreatic cancer. 

Dr. Sharvit is a young scientist who invested her MSc and PhD in learning and understanding the effect of mushroom-derived compounds on cancer cells.

Over the past years, Dr. Sharvit has been working on promoting the synthesis of a novel anti-cancer mushroom-derived compound for the treatment of cancer.

She is an expert in cellular and molecular biology; designing, conducting and interpreting scientific research.

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Cancer Program: Drug Development for One of the Deadliest of Cancers

CanCuRX Ltd.

Information Systems and Knowledge Management

Prof. Ilan Shimshoni is a full professor in the Department of Information Systems at the University of Haifa and formerly served as chair of the department.

He was a faculty member in the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology Department of Industrial Engineering and Management and completed his postdoctoral studies in the Department of Computer Science at the Technion. He received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana ̶ Champaign.
Prof. Shimshoni's main research interests are computer vision, computer graphics, machine learning, and robotics. He has served as principal investigator for various projects, including grants from the Israeli Ministry of Science, Israeli Science Foundation (ISF), European Union Horizon 2020, and Israeli Ministry of Industry and Trade (MAGNET program).

Prof. Snir research is focused on mathematical and algorithmic solutions to problems in bioinformatics, in particular in the field of evolutionary tree reconstruction (phylogenetics). The tools in use come from fields such as combinatorial optimization, statistics and probability, mathematics, and information theory. The research is characterized by ample collaborations with researchers from broad disciplines under the general framework of a systematic analysis of evolutionary processes aiming at finding biologically significant patterns.
Specific research interests:
1. Supertree Methods for Large Scale Phylogenetic Reconstruction.
2. Analytical Detection of Horizontal Transfer.
3. Universal PaceMaker of Genome Evolution and Aging.
4. Maximum Likelihood Phylogenetic Reconstruction.
5. Convex Recoloring.
6. Hadamard Conjugation.

Judith Somekh is a faculty member at the Information Systems Department in the University of Haifa. Her BSc (2001), MSc (2007) and Ph.D. (2013) in Information Systems Engineering are from the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology. She has received the Promoting Women in Science Award from the Israeli Ministry of Science during her Ph.D studies. Between 2015-2017 she was a postdoctoral researcher at Isaac Kohane's lab at the Department for Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School at the Harvard University. Her research interests are in developing methodologies combining data-driven and model-driven methods to enhance the understanding of diseases.

Website:
https://sites.google.com/is.haifa.ac.il/judithsomekh/home

PROFESSOR STERN IS LEADING THE SEARCH FOR CLUES THAT WOULD ENABLE MORE PRECISE PREDICTIONS OF PARKINSON’S DISEASE ONSET FOR AT-RISK PATIENTS

ABOUT PROFESSOR SHANI STERN

Professor Shani Stern is a researcher for the Sagol Neurobiology Department and leading a lab that uses electrophysiology and molecular biology methods to find disease mechanisms. She uses her expertise in this area to delve into the biological mysteries of the brain that most intrigue her. Stern received her B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from Tel Aviv University. She went on to receive her Ph.D. in physics from the Weizmann Institute in Israel. While there, Stern collaborated with the neuroscience department. She later joined the Salk Institute for Biological Studies as a postdoctoral fellow, and became a member of the Engman Laboratory for Schizophrenia Research.

During her postdoctoral training, Stern used induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology to study changes in the physiology of different brain disorders: bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease, autism spectrum disorder, epilepsy, and intellectual disability caused by a few different mutations. iPSC technology provides the ability to reprogram adult mature cells into pluripotent cells, allowing differentiation into multiple cell types. Importatnly, iPSCs can be used to derive brain cells from patients with diseases where the genetic changes are complex and sometimes unknown. Additionally, Stern can produce targeted mutations in iPSCs which allow these cells to be used for functional analysis of variations in the genome.

WHAT IS ELECTROPHYSIOLGY?

Electrophysiology (EP) is a method of understanding the wayelectric signals are generated in cells and tissues in the body. EPstudy is used to understand the physiology and function of cells,and in neuroscience - neurons. It can be used to understandspecific mechanisms that may be altered in diseased neurons. Neurons connect to each other through electrical impulses. When a neuron is studied using EP the impact of surrounding neurons can be observed by measuring the currents enteringthe cell through synaptic inputs. An increase or decrease in thesynaptic currents can point to dysfunction in the synapses andcan result in neuronal atrophy

PREDICTING THE ONSET OF PARKINSON’S DISEASE FOR THOSEPREDICTING THE ONSET OF PARKINSON’S DISEASE FOR THOSEAT RISK AND EXPLORING POTENTIAL TREATMENT METHODS

Professor Stern uses iPSC technology to derive neurons from Parkinson’s patients that can be observed as they develop andage. These derived neurons have the exact same geneticmodifications as the patients they are derived from and istherefore relevant both to Parkinson's disease caused bymutations as well as to idiopathic Parkinson's disease. Thisenables Stern to witness pathological changes that occur asthe disease progresses. The method has led to observationsof a reduction in synaptic connectivity in the patients' neurons- even before a patient would be showing symptoms. Parkinson's disease patients have a severe neuronal cell deaththat is more specific to areas in the brain that are compacted with dopaminergic neurons, such as the substantia nigra parscompacta. The cause of this excess cell death remains unclear, but certain neuronal pathologies occur before mortality suchas aggregation of proteins in these neurons that are termed "Lewy Bodies"

Using the cell lines she has created, Professor Stern is growing 3D structures that resemble the structure of the substantia nigra pars compacta called organoids. These serve as a novel platform for testing possible treatment. Professor Stern hasstarted experiencing with modulators of the dopaminereceptors, as well as drugs that are given to Gaucher patients, and is now testing for improved neuronal survival in hertreated organoids. This scheme is used together with electrophysiology and extensive analysis of RNA sequencing to find pathways that are altered in the disease and can be further treated.

FUTURE RESEARCH POTENTIALFUTURE RESEARCH POTENTIAL

Professor Stern’s use of iPSC has allowed her to create cell lines from patients with different genetic markers for Parkinson’s along with lines from patients who’s Parkinson’s developed sporadically. By comparing the development of the disease among these different patient groups she can observe the common traits to the different types of Parkinson's disease. Further exploring the cell lines through genetic sequencing allows her to also explore the roles other genes - not directly related to Parkinson’s disease - may be playing in the process. Using RNA sequencing Stern has found that there are several unrelated genes that are severely dysregulated in the cell lines of Parkinson’s patients. Strikingly these include many types of collagen genes. Professor Stern is exploring the possibility of growing skin cell lines as well as skin or ganoids in order to further investigate this relationship, and in the hope of building an effective prediction algorithm that would allow the prediction of disease onset and severity at the prodromal stage.

Websiite: https://www.shanistern-diseasemodelinglab.com

Dr. Sznitman received her B.A. in sociology from the University of Manchester and her M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from Stockholm University. She then completed a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Annenberg Public Policy Centre at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2010 Dr. Sznitman joined the School of Public Health at the University of Haifa where she is a senior lecturer.

Dr. Sznitman’s most recent research mainly focuses on medical cannabis use and policies in Israel and in cross-national contexts. Currently, her funded projects include examination of barriers and facilitators of physicians’ medical cannabis recommendations and examination of the evolution of medical cannabis policies. In addition, Dr. Sznitman’s research focuses on illegal drug use, including a collaboration with the Global Cannabis Cultivation Research Consortium that focuses on domestic cannabis cultivation. Dr. Sznitman also examines the social as well as individual forces that lead to substance use and how this knowledge can be used to develop novel and more effective drug prevention programs. Dr. Sznitman and her colleagues have conducted research projects that aim to understand the nature of individual differences (e.g. sensation seeking), school level differences (e.g. school climate and random student drug testing policies) and national level difference (e.g. drug use normalization) and how these factors relate to substance use.

Dr. Sarit Szpiro is a faculty member in the special education department and the head of Amplilab at the University of Haifa. Dr. Szpiro's research is at the intersection of assistive technologies and home based learning paradigms to support typical and special populations including children, older adults, people with visual impairments, and autism. Dr. Szpiro uses cutting edge technologies including computer vision, augmented reality, and machine learning to develop tools that enhance users in real life situations.

BSc - Mathematics and Cognitive Science (Hebrew University)
MA - Cognitive Psychology (Tel Aviv University)
Phd - Cognitive Psychology (New York University)
Postdocs - Assistive technologies and augmented reality (Cornell Tech & Harvard Medical School)

Industry experience:
Research data science and machine learning (Amazon Alexa - Cambridge, MA; CrowdFlower - SF, CA)

Prof. Dan Tchernov is Vice President for Resource Development and External Relations at the University of Haifa since October 2017. A marine biologist, Prof. Tchernov is founder of the Marine Biology Department at the Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences (2010). Prof. Tchernov heads the coastal research facility as part of the Helmsley Charitable Trust Mediterranean Research Center. He also heads the Morris Kahn Marine Research Station. His main interests are climate change biology, coral biology, marine ecology and conservation biology.
Prof. Tchernov was born in Jerusalem in 1967. He graduated from the Hebrew University in 1994 with a degree in Biology and completed his PhD in Oceanography at the Hebrew University in 2003. He did his postdoctoral research at the IMCS at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Between the years 2004 -2009 he served as administrative director of the Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences in Eilat, and between 2009-2011 he served as deputy director of the Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences.
Prof. Tchernov is married to Dr. Beverley Goodman, has four children and lives in Caesarea, Israel.

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University of Haifa Welcomes New VP for External Affairs & Resource Development - published on Heights ,Fall 2017

Marine Sciences 

Tali Treibitz is head of the Marine Imaging Lab in the University of Haifa’s Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences.

She received a BA in Computer Science and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. In 2010-2013 she was a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and in the Marine Physical Lab at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

She was the recipient of the Google Anita Borg Scholarship in 2009 and the Weizmann Institute of Science National Postdoctoral Award for Advancing Women in Science in 2010.

She has also been an active PADI open water scuba instructor.

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Intelligent Cameras: Overcoming the Challenges of Underwater and Haze Photography

Roi Treister, PhD, pain researcher.

Upon completion of his second post-doc fellowship at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Treister returned to Israel, to serve as a faculty member in the Department of Nursing, were he established the Clinical Pain Innovation Lab.
In his lab, Dr. Treister and his team are preforming pain related projects involving various aspects of clinical pain investigation, including the development of new methodologies to assess pain, investigating the efficacy of various interventions, and studying pain-related underlying mechanisms.
Dr. Treister is the recipient of the prestigious Alon fellowships for outstanding young researchers.

Shlomo Wagner is a faculty member in the Sagol department of Neurobiology and the head of the Laboratory for Neurobiology of Social Behavior, at the University of Haifa. He investigates behavioral, neuronal and molecular processes involved in social behavior and memory in animal models. In addition, he explore brain mechanisms, which are involved in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the prevalence of which has sharply increased over the past decades. To that end, is using various animal models of syndromic ASD to reveal modified brain activity leading to impairments in social behavior, such as those found in individuals diagnosed with ASD.

Web page:
http://shlomowagner-lab.haifa.ac.il

Dr Nicolas Waldmann is a geologist with a wide background in marine and lacustrine geosciences. Dr Waldmann received his MSc from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and his PhD from the University of Geneva (Switzerland). After a postdoc at the University of Bergen (Norway) in marine geology and geophysics, he returned to Israel in 2011 and founded the Basin Analysis and Petrophysical laboratory (PetroLab) at the Department of Marine Geosciences, University of Haifa.

Scientific projects carried out at PetroLab cross a wide range of multidisciplinary studies including from paleoclimate reconstruction in sub-Saharan Africa using lake records to paleo-environmental reconstruction in the Beringia region using marine counterparts. Moreover, understanding the petrophysical properties of the subsurface is one of the key factors being developed and studied by the team.

Dr Waldmann has participated in many marine and lake research expeditions, including onshore scientists in IODP leg 359 (Maldives) or coring over 400 m long sediment records from Lake Chala (Kenya). As a consequence of his involvement in marine and lake research, Dr Waldmann is currently co-leading several IODP and ICDP large-scale scientific drilling projects. So far, he has published over 50 peer-reviewed publications in leading scientific journals.
In 2013, Dr Waldmann was awarded by the Wolf Foundation with the Krill Prize for Scientific Excellence.

Website: https://sites.google.com/marsci.haifa.ac.il/petrolab/home
Twitter: https://twitter.com/petrolabh

Dr. Galit Weinstein is a faculty member at the School of Public Health in the University of Haifa, and the head of the Epidemiology program.

Galit has received her PhD in epidemiology and preventive medicine from Tel-Aviv University, where she explored vascular risk factors for cognitive impairment. She then was a post-doctoral fellow at the Framingham Heart Study, Boston University.

Galit’s research focuses on genetic and life-style risk factors for dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. She also aims to identify early biomarkers for prediction of these diseases.

Prof. Michal Yerushalmy (BSc, MSc, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology; EdD, Harvard University) is on the faculty of the Department of Mathematics Education in the University of Haifa’s Faculty of Education.
She is former Vice President and Dean of Research (2011-2016) at the University of Haifa, and is currently Director of MERI – The Mathematics Education Research and Innovation Center at the University of Haifa, and an Academic Board Member of the LINKS I-CORE (Israeli Center of Research Excellence in the field of Learning in the Networked Society). Her interests are in learning with computerized environments. Prof. Yerushalmy’s research focus is on the study of mathematical learning and teaching; design and implementation of reformed curricula; and cognitive processes involved in learning with multiple external representations, bodily interactions and modeling.
She has authored and designed numerous software packages and developed the interactive "VisualMath" secondary school mathematics web curriculum.

In the Math4Mobile project Prof. Yerushalmy offers ways to make technology available for construction of knowledge by everyone everywhere. Her work has gained national and international recognition (the 2010 ISDDE Prize for Excellence in Educational Design; the Israeli Presidential Conference: Facing Tomorrow 2009).

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Prof. Shira Zelber-Sagi.
Head, School of Public Health, Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Sciences, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
Department Gastroenterology, Tel-Aviv Medical Center, Tel-Aviv.

Prof. Zelber-Sagi is a clinical dietitian, Epidemiologist and a researcher in nutritional epidemiology. Graduated BSc in nutrition sciences at the Hebrew University. Graduated a PhD in epidemiology and preventive medicine at the Sackler School of Medicine at Tel Aviv University. Currently, is an Associate Professor and Head of the School of Public Health, Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Sciences, University of Haifa. She is a member at the “National Committee for Nutrition, Gastroenterology and Liver Disease”. She is also a member at the EASL Policy and Public Health Committee and the United European Gastroenterology (UEG) Policy and Public Health Committee. Her research deals mainly with nutrition and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) epidemiology, prevention and treatment.

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 Prof. Anna Zisberg a faculty at Cheryl Spencer Department of Nursing, the University of Haifa. Anna is a nurse with PhD in Nursing from the University of Washington, Seattle, WA. Her research agenda promotes studies that contribute to maintaining function and quality of life of frail older adults. Her main research focus is on understanding mechanisms that account for changes in functional and cognitive status in older adults during times of health challenges such as hospitalization as well as exploring the effects of organizational structure and quality of care on hospitalization outcomes. She published more than 50 articles on the topic. Her research is continuously funded by ISF and NIHP grants.

Right now Anna and her team are conducting a large multi-site study in 20 internal medical units in 4 medical centers (supported by ISF Grant) that evaluates a Multilevel Model of In-Hospital Mobility among Acutely Ill Older Adults.

Anna is an expert in development and validation of instrument and assessment tools, among which are: Scale of Older Adults’ Routine (SOAR), Attitudes towards mobility during hospitalization (ATM-H), Measure of Informal Caregiving for Hospitalized Older Adults (ICHOA).