Tamar Flesh's research focuses on motion control and the possibility of learning from the way the human brain monitors the body's movements, and using this knowledge to develop advanced ways to control the motion of robots
Tamar Flesh was born in Ramat Gan. Her childhood was spent in the company of lots of reading books ("everything, except science fiction"), and "good" grades. Her plans for what she would be when she grew up spread across a fairly wide front of possibilities. When she grew up a little, she was drawn to art and participated in a program for art-seeking youth. In this framework, she met with the participants in another youth program: the participants of the Weizmann Institute of Science's youth camp, an event that may have somewhat strengthened her inclinations towards the various fields of science.
Until that time, she invested equally in science studies and the humanistic fields of study, at the Ohel Shem high school in Ramat Gan. After that, she began to study mathematics and physics at Tel Aviv University, and went on to a master's degree in medical physics. "I wanted to learn something more related to life than pure theoretical physics," she explains.
During her studies for a master's degree, Falesh engaged in research on the processes of blood flow in the brain, and from here her interest shifted to researching the ways the brain works. The expression "gliding" in this case is an understatement. "I was really captivated by the mysteries surrounding this field of research," she says. At that time, brain research was considered one of the fields of the life sciences, and many people wondered why Flesh, who delved into physics and mathematics, decided to "enter fields not for her". In this sense, she was among the first scientists to promote the multidisciplinary concept of brain research, the leading concept in the world today in this field, which the Weizmann Institute of Science is considered one of the prominent centers implementing it.
Her developing interest in brain research led her to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). There she completed her doctorate in medical physics (in a unique program shared with MIT and Harvard), and went on to a postdoctorate. Her research began to focus on motion control and the possibility of learning from the way the human brain monitors the body's movements, and using this knowledge to develop advanced ways to control the motion of robots.
After completing her postdoctoral research, Tamar returned to Israel and joined the department of applied mathematics at the Weizmann Institute of Science, after which she was promoted to the rank of associate professor. "At that time, a research group was founded in the department in the field of artificial intelligence, which is largely close to my areas of interest in robotics and brain research," she says. "Actually, when I was an undergraduate student, I was interested in artificial intelligence, but somehow it didn't seem practical for me to pursue it. There are scientists who know from the beginning what they want to do, and on the other hand, there are others who need more time to choose for themselves a field in which to focus. I probably belong to the second group."
In her work at the institute, Prof. Flesh developed mathematical models that describe the way in which the human brain plans and supervises the movement of the limbs. These models are based on the way the brain creates - within itself - a model of the space, and then plans and moves the limbs in space using the nerves, muscles and skeleton. The models are also based on an original theory devised by Prof. Flesch, which states that the main factor according to which the brain plans the movement paths of the upper limbs in certain movements, such as the movement of extending the arm, is the "smoothness of the movement", a concept that refers to the rate of change of the acceleration of the hand as it is expressed in spatial coordinates.
Through an accurate analysis of the movement, it is possible to predict very closely the routes and characteristics of the movement that will be chosen and performed by the subjects. In other experiments, a precise analysis of the movement is used to examine the differences between the way healthy people move their limbs, and the way people suffering from degenerative brain diseases, such as Parkinson's disease, do it. Examining these differences helps in understanding the relationship between an injury to a certain area of the brain, and the occurrence of a failure in one of the components of planning and executing the movement. The understandings gained in these studies are also used in the development of advanced robots.
Recently, Prof. Falesh has been expanding her research areas with the aim of also studying and understanding the characteristics of complex movements in space and time, and the way in which such movements are learned, processed and represented in the brain.
