Five new members joined the Academy of Sciences

The new members are Prof. Michal Biran, Prof. Moshe Bar Asher and Prof. Alex Lubotsky - all three from the Hebrew University, Prof. Yadin Dodai from the Weizmann Institute and Prof. Ariel Porat from the Tel Aviv University

Five senior scientists are currently joining the Israeli National Academy of Sciences.

The five new members, senior scientists from Israeli universities, were elected at the Academy's general assembly on the recommendation of Academy members from its two divisions: the Natural Sciences Division and the Humanities Division. The Academy of Sciences currently has 112 male and female scientists elected for life.

The Israel National Academy of Sciences is the highest body in the scientific community in Israel. It was founded by law in 1961 with the aim of bringing together the best scientists in Israel, fostering and promoting scientific activity in the country, and advising Israeli governments regarding research and scientific planning of national importance.

Michal Biran - Professor in the Department of Islamic Studies and the Department of Asian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Prof. Michal Biran holds the Chair of Humanities for the Sophie and Max Maidanens Foundation and head of the Friberg Center for East Asian Studies. She completed all her degrees at the Hebrew University - all with high honors - and during her studies she spent a year at Shandong University in China and Harvard University in the USA. She did her post-doctorate at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton.
Prof. Byrne is a historian of medieval Asia, specializing in nomadic empires and the intercultural relations between China and the Islamic world. She published books, files and articles on these subjects, with an emphasis on the period of the Mongol Empire and the history of Central Asia in the Mongol and pre-Mongol periods. Byrne is one of the world's leading historians of the Mongol Empire and of pre-modern Central Asia, and this is also due to her unique linguistic skills and the fact that her research combines the use of Chinese, Arab, Persian and Russian sources.
Prof. Byrne is currently leading an international research project called: "Mobility, Empire and Intercultural Relations in Mongolian Eurasia", she is co-editor of THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF THE MONGOL EMPIRE published by Cambridge Books and organizes a Mongolian-Israeli-German excavation project and a project dealing with comparative research of empires. . Prof. Byrne won the Bruno Prize on behalf of Yad Hanadiv in 2006, the Landau Prize on behalf of the Lottery in 2007, the Anhlisa Meir Prize of the Humboldt Foundation in 2013 and the Kalachki Prize for the Advancement of Science in 2014.

Moshe Bar-Asher - Professor Emeritus in the Hebrew Language Department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Prof. Moshe Bar-Asher studied at the children's village "Beitno" in Ra'anana, at the high school yeshiva "Hadom" and at the Beit Midrash for its teachers in Rehovot. He later studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in the departments of the Hebrew language and the Bible, studied at the Sorbonne and the Collège de France in Paris, was a visiting researcher at Harvard University and served as the head of the Hebrew language department and the head of the Jewish Studies Institute at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the holder of the H.N. Bialik Chair for the Study of the Hebrew Language. In the years 1993-1987, Bar-Asher served as the vice president of the Hebrew Language Academy, and since 1993 he has served as the president of the academy. In 1995, he was elected a foreign member of the American Academy of Jewish Studies, served as a visiting professor at universities in France and the United States, and in the years 2000-1994, he was the vice president of the Memorial Fund for Jewish culture.
Prof. Bar-Asher's scientific field of study is classical Hebrew (the language of the Bible, the language of the scrolls from the Judean Desert and especially the language of the Sages), the Aramaic of the Land of Israel, the language traditions of the Jews of North Africa, the Hebrew of the descendants of the Martyrs in southern France and the languages ​​of the Jews. Prof. Bar-Asher is one of the most prominent researchers and leaders in the study of Hebrew and Aramaic linguistics in our generation, and his research was one of the cornerstones in these fields. He published 15 books, over 250 articles and edited dozens of books and jubilee files.
Bar-Asher is the recipient of the Israel Prize for the study of the Hebrew language and the study of Jewish dialects in 1993. He was also awarded the Ben-Zvi Prize for the study of Eastern Jewish traditions in 2002, the Rothschild Prize in 2008 and the AMT Prize in 2012.

Yadin Dodai - Professor of Neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute of Science
Prof. Dudai holds the Sarah and Michael Sela Chair of Neurobiology and was the Dean of the Faculty of Biology and Head of the Department of Neurobiology and Brain Research Centers at the Weizmann Institute. He received a bachelor of science degree in biochemistry and genetics with honors and completed a doctorate in biophysics at the Weizmann Institute of Science. He later studied at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, where he laid the foundation for the fruitful field of memory research using genetic methods (neurogenetics). Dudai also served as a visiting professor at Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Edinburgh, Boston and New York universities, and served as a Fogarty Research Fellow at the US National Institutes of Health.

Prof. Dudai's research deals with the operation of learning and memory mechanisms in the brain, and focuses on the processes of memory creation of one-time events and their stability. He published over 200 articles as well as major books in the field of memory, and was widely recognized for his groundbreaking discoveries in the field of the molecular, brain, and behavioral mechanisms of memory encoding, maturation, stability, extinction, and reprocessing, and the rules that direct these mechanisms at different levels of evolution. He is one of the pioneers of research in the field of brain and memory mechanisms and the pioneers of the trend to unify research levels in these fields, and has become an accepted authority in the world.

Dudai has also served since 2004 as an outstanding global visiting professor at the Center for Neuroscience of New York University and as the scientific director of the Center of Excellence in Cognition Research of the Centers of Excellence program in Israel. In addition to his research work, Dudai held senior positions in the academy and outside of it, among other things he was a member of the budgeting and planning committee of the Council for Higher Education. He was awarded honorary membership in international organizations, was invited to give many honorary lectures around the world and won prizes for his research, among others, the prestigious French "Ibsen" prize in 2013 together with Prof. Richard Morris and Prof. Tim Bliss, for extraordinary achievements in the study of memory .

Alexander (Alex) Lubotsky - Professor of Mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Prof. Alex Lubotsky began his studies at Bar-Ilan University at the same time as his high school studies, and thus completed his first degree with high honors only a year after receiving his matriculation certificate. He later studied in a direct path to a doctorate and after five years of military service he was discharged with the rank of captain and joined the Einstein Institute of Mathematics of the Hebrew University. At the age of 29 he became a professor and today holds the Weil Chair.

Lubotsky's field of research is the theory of groups. He excels in combining it with other fields of mathematics: geometry, number theory, combinatorics and computer science. Prof. Lubotsky is one of the world's leading researchers in the theory of groups, one of the main fields in mathematics; He solved a considerable number of important open questions in the field and his works opened up new research paths.
Lubotsky published about 130 articles and 4 books. His works won him Israeli and international awards, including Ardosh, Rothschild and Sunyer i Balaguer. He appears on the list of the most cited scientists in the world (ISI), an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2006 the University of Chicago awarded him an honorary doctorate for his contributions to modern mathematics.
Lubotsky is a sought-after lecturer in many international forums, in 2011 he was honored to deliver the three main lectures of the joint annual conference of the US Mathematical Associations - an honor rarely given to a non-American scientist and the first time to an Israeli scientist. He also served as a visiting professor at Stanford, Yale, Chicago, Columbia, NYU and IAS-Princeton.
Lubotsky is active in public affairs in academia and beyond. He served as a member of the 14th Knesset, on the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee, the Constitution and Status of Women Committee, the Science Committee and was known for his mediation activities on religion and state issues.

Ariel Porat - Professor of Law at Tel Aviv University

Prof. Ariel Porat, who served in the Intelligence Corps and is a major in the reserves, has a graduate degree and a doctorate from Tel Aviv University. He was a research fellow at Yale University immediately after completing his doctorate, and a lecturer at the Faculty of Law at Tel Aviv University from 1990. In 2006-2002 he was the dean of the faculty and during his tenure he founded the joint master's degree programs of the Faculty of Law with Berkeley and Northwestern University and also founded the admissions program for outstanding students from the periphery.
He is currently in charge of the Allen Fuhr Chair of Private Law, and a permanent visiting professor in special status at the University of Chicago. In the past, he also served as a visiting professor at the universities of New York, Columbia, Berkeley and Virginia. He was a member of the board of the American Law and Economics Association for three years and is a member of the American Law Institute. In the years 2002-1997 he headed the Tsegala Super Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Law and founded the journal Theoretical Inquiries in Law. His research deals with the field of tort law, other areas of private law as well as the economic analysis of law. Prof. Porat is considered one of the top legal researchers, a leader in the field of economic analysis of law, and has positioned the Israeli legal academy as one of the leaders in the field. In addition, he is one of the most prominent legal researchers in tort law and contract law.

Porat wrote four books and over 70 articles. He is the recipient of the AMT Prize in Social Sciences (Law) for 2014. His research has earned him additional awards, including the Cheshin Prize for Academic Excellence in Law (2010) and the Zeltner Prize for Legal Research (2012). He was also awarded the Sussman Prize for Law and the Rector's Prize for Excellence in Teaching (2009).