Mor Nitzan, 2016 Awardee

Dr. Mor Nitzan is a Senior Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with joint affiliations at the School of Computer Science and Engineering, Racah Institute of Physics, and Faculty of Medicine. Previously, she was a John Harvard Distinguished Science Fellow and James S. McDonnell Fellow at Harvard University. Mor obtained a BSc in Physics and a PhD in Physics and Computational Biology at the Hebrew University as an Azrieli Sciences Fellow. Mor is the recipient of the Azrieli Early Career Faculty Fellowship, Alon Fellowship, Krill Award, Google Research Scholar Award, Prime Minister’s Researcher Recruitment Award, Eric and Wendy Schmidt Postdoctoral Award for Women in Mathematical and Computing Sciences, and Vatat Postdoctoral Fellowship. Mor’s research is at the interface of Computer Science, Physics, and Biology, focusing on the representation, inference and design of multicellular systems. Her work is supported by an ERC Starting Grant, ISF Research and Equipment Grants, and CHE Data Science Grant.

Reuth Mirsky, 2017 Awardee

Reuth Mirsky is a Senior Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at the Computer Science Department in Bar Ilan University and is the head of the Goal-optimization using Learning and Decision-making (GOLD) lab. She received her PhD in 2019 from Ben-Gurion University, and was a postdoc at the University of Texas until 2022. In her research, Reuth is interested in the similarities and the differences between AI and natural intelligence, and how these can be used to extend AI agents and robots to be better collaborators for humans. To accomplish this goal, Reuth utilizes techniques for Multi-agent systems, Reinforcement Learning, and HRI research. Reuth is an active member in the AI and HRI research communities, and was selected as one of the 2020 Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) Rising Stars.

Sivan Trajtenberg Mills, 2018 Awardee

Dr. Sivan Trajtenberg Mills is a postdoctoral researcher at MIT. She will start her own lab at Tel Aviv University in the EECS department in summer 2025. She received her BsC in Physics and Computer science from Tel Aviv University (TAU). She holds a PhD in Physics from TAU in the field of nonlinear optics, supervised by prof. Ady Arie. In her postdoctoral research, Sivan develops devices that can control the phase and amplitude of light at very high speeds (GHz). The growing interest in developing such a device is driven by several applications: quantum computing, where atom or ion qubit implementations require addressing qubits at timescales shorter than their decoherence time; imaging through scattering media, where GHz speed modulation can allow non-invasive in vivo imaging; and LiDAR applications that require very high speed scanning of an input source. 

Rotem Dror, 2019 Awardee

Dr. Rotem Dror is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania Cognitive Computation Group, mentored by Prof. Dan Roth. She received her Ph.D. from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, where she was advised by Prof. Roi Reichart. With a focus on Natural Language Processing applications, her research involves developing statistically sound methodologies for empirical investigation and evaluation. As part of her research, she is also looking into ways to leverage the statistical properties of language to generate text that is useful for NLP applications such as event processing, fact validation, and summarization.

Shirly Geffen, 2020 Awardee

Shirly Geffen is a W2 Professor at Münster Universität. She earned her PhD in mathematics through a joint program between Ben-Gurion University in Israel and Münster Universität in Germany. Following the completion of her PhD, she started a postdoctoral position at the KU Leuven in Belgium. After one year in Belgium, Shirly was accepted into her current role at Münster Universität. Shirly works in Operator Algebras and is interested in the connections between the properties of the dynamical system and its attached C-algebra.

Michal Friedman, 2021 Awardee

Michal Friedman is a postdoctoral researcher at the Systems Group at the department of computer science of ETH Zurich, working with Prof. Gustavo Alonso. Her research interests are broad and include systems, concurrent computing, programming languages, and sustainable computing. She obtained a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the Technion, advised by Prof. Erez Petrank, and was generously supported by the Azrieli Foundation Fellowship. During her Ph.D she developed concurrent data structures for non-volatile memories. She completed her BSc summa cum laude at the Computer Science Department at the Technion. Her research focuses on designing system fundamentals, across software and hardware, to improve the performance and efficiency while guaranteeing correctness of next-generation computing platforms and emerging applications.

Rana Shahout, 2022 Awardee

Rana is a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Before starting her postdoc, Rana was a Ph.D. student at the CS department at Technion and received her B.Sc. and M.Sc. from the same department. Rana worked at Mellanox, now Nvidia, from 2012-2016. Rana also interned at Yahoo! and Cornell Tech. She is primarily interested in algorithms for data-driven systems.

Shay Sadovsky, 2023 Awardee

Shay Sadovsky is a mathematician at Courant Institute. Previously, she was an Azrieli Fellow and received her Ph.D. from Tel Aviv University, where she was advised by Prof. Shiri Artstein-Avidan. Shay’s research is at the intersection of convex geometry and optimal transport. Her main interest is in geometric and functional inequalities, which she studies using tools from optimal transport. She is currently interested in Talagrand’s cost-entropy inequality and the Gaussian correlation inequality, and in her previous work she studied cost-OT theory and cost-Blashke-Santalo inequalities, as well as Godbersen’s conjecture. Before her Ph.D., Shay was a B.Sc. and M.Sc. student at the Lautman Interdisciplinary Program at Tel Aviv University. Shay’s research generally focuses on problems in geometry. More specifically, she is interested in Convex Geometry, and in the geometry that arises from studying optimization problems, called the theory of Optimal Transport. In these fields Shay studies and compares ‘natural’ quantities attached to functions and shapes such as volume, measure, entropy and cost.

Yael Vinker, 2024 Awardee

Yael Vinker is a postdoctoral associate at MIT CSAIL, advised by Prof. Antonio Torralba. She completed her PhD at Tel Aviv University, under the supervision of Prof. Daniel Cohen-Or and Prof. Ariel Shamir. Her research is at the intersection of computer graphics and art, with a focus on generative models. Yael’s work has been recognized with two SIGGRAPH Best Paper Awards. Yael focuses on generative models within the context of design, creativity, and visual communication. She is particularly interested in exploring the hidden representations of large vision-language models and how their priors can be leveraged to enhance the way humans and computers communicate and convey meaning through visual elements.