leadership

Prof. Ehud Keinan of the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry at the Technion, was born and educated in Israel, obtained PhD from the Weizmann Institute of Science and postdoc at the University of Wisconsin. He has published nearly 200 research papers, 20 patents and 3 books on biocatalysis, organic synthesis, molecular-computing, supra-molecular chemistry, improvised explosives and drug discovery. He was Dean of the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry, Adjunct Professor at The Scripps Research Institute in California, founder and first Head of the Institute of Catalysis in the Technion and founded two startup companies. Since 2009, he is President of the Israel Chemical Society and Editor-in-Chief of the Israel Journal of Chemistry.

Hagai Netzer is a Professor Emeritus at Tel Aviv University. He joined the university in 1977 and over the years served as the chair of the Astrophysics Department, the director of the Wise Observatory, and a member of the Board of Trustees. He also held central positions in the ministry of education and the Wolf Foundation.
Netzer research includes massive black holes and galaxies of various types. He published more than 250 papers and several professional and popular books. He is a fellow of the Israel Physical Society and an associate member of the Royal Astronomical Society in the U.K.

Sefy Hendler is a senior lecture in early modern Italian art the Art History department of the Faculty of the Arts, Tel Aviv University where he also heads the undergraduate honors program in Art History. He graduated in both Art History and Law studies from Tel Aviv University and obtained his PhD. in 2009 in Paris from the Université de Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne). He specializes in the Paragone (competitive comparison) between painting and sculpture, the subject of his book La guerre des Arts : Le Paragone peinture-sculpture en Italie XVe-XVIIe siècle (L’Erma di Bretscneider, Rome, 2013) winner of the l’Erma per l’arte best manuscript prize for the year 2010. Hendler published among other in Studiolo, La revue de l’Art, Sculpture Journal, Seizième Siècle and different exhibition catalogues as the Bronzino artist and poet in the court of the Medici (Palazzo Storzzi, 2010) and Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino: diverging paths of Mannerism (Palazzo Strozzi 2014). He was a boursier (scholarship holder) of the École francaise de Rome – Villa Médicis, and borsista (scholarship holder) at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz (Max Planck Institut). He is a member of the Centre d’Histoire de l’Art de la Renaissance (CHAR) at the French National institute of Art History (INHA). His forthcoming book: Gracious and beautiful monster: the literary universe of Bronzino’s Nano Morgante is forthcoming in English and in Italian (Maschietto editore, Iconologia collection edited by Antonio Natali) examines links between literature, painting and botany at the court of the Medici in 16th century Florence.

Professor Michael Lin completed his B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. studies in mathematics at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Since 1971 he was for 6 years assistant professor and associate professor at Ohio State University. From 1976 till his retirement in 2011 he was at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, full professor since 1984. Professor Lin was chair of the department of mathematics in 1986-1990, in charge of absorption in the department of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, including the establishment of first year studies in Russian, in 1990-1993, president of the Israel mathematical Union in 2008-2009. Professor Lin has published over 90 professional articles in the areas of functional analysis, operator theory, ergodic theory and Markov chains.