Distinguished Speakers

Distinguished Speakers

Healing the World Symposium
AFHU Greater New York Region
November 10, 2009

Professor Isaiah Arkin
Professor Isaiah (Shy) Arkin is the newly appointed head of the Authority for Research and Development at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  Born in Tel Aviv, Professor Arkin earned his bachelor's degree at Hebrew University’s Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment and at the Faculty of Life Sciences at Tel Aviv University. He received his Ph.D. in cell biology at Yale University. From 1997-2000, he was a lecturer in the Department of Biochemistry at Cambridge University in England. He joined The Hebrew University faculty in 2001, and was appointed chair of the Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences in 2008.

Professor Arkin's research uses computational science and bioinformatics in order to investigate the structural biology of membrane proteins. His work, which is based on novel experimental techniques, focuses on revealing the structure of membrane proteins. He has been shedding new light on the cell penetration mechanisms of the flu virus and SARS, and is examining the special folding of proteins responsible for Huntington's disease. His studies combine biology, chemistry, physics and medicine in order to solve medical mysteries.

A highly regarded teacher as well as researcher and administrative leader, Professor Arkin is also involved in the establishment of a new biology-chemistry studies track at The Hebrew University. 

Ronny Costi
Ronny Costi joined The Hebrew University in 2000, after five years of service to Israel in the Israeli navy. He received his B.Sc. in chemistry from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and was awarded a Ph.D. in physical chemistry and nanotechnology in 2009. He conducted his graduate work under the leadership of Professor Uri Banin, head of the Harvey S. Krueger Family Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology.

Ronny Costi’s Ph.D. research focuses on light-induced processes in hybrid metal-semiconductor nanoparticles. These processes are the basis for photocatalytic applications, including water splitting for renewable green energy. During his studies at The Hebrew University, Dr. Costi has received many awards, among these: the CAMBR Foundation Nanoscience Fellowship; the Jacob Liavand Award for Alternative Energy Research; and the MRS Graduate Student Silver Award.

Currently a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT, Ronny Costi working with Professor Daniel Nocera. The team is researching catalysts for water splitting with the goal of producing hydrogen and oxygen for alternative energy applications.

Professor Sergio DellaPergola
Professor Sergio DellaPergola, born in Italy, has lived in Israel since 1966. He holds a Ph.D. from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is the former Chairman and Professor of Population Studies at The Hebrew University’s Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry. He is the incumbent of the Shlomo Argov Chair in Israel-Diaspora Relations.

An internationally known specialist on the demography of world Jewry, Professor DellaPergola has published many books and more than 100 scholarly papers on historical demography, the family, international migration, Jewish identification, and projections in the Diaspora and in Israel.  Currently on sabbatical at the University of Illinois at Chicago, he has lectured at more than 50 universities and research centers worldwide. He has served as a senior policy consultant to the President of Israel, the Israeli Government, the Jerusalem Municipality and many major national and international organizations. In 1999, Professor DellaPergola received the Marshall Sklare Award for distinguished achievement from the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry.

Professor Ilana Pardes
Professor Ilana Pardes received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She taught at Princeton University from 1990 to 1992 and was a visiting professor at the University of California Berkeley in 1996 and in 2006. 

Professor Pardes is a Professor of Comparative Literature at The Hebrew University, where she has been a faculty member since 1992.  Her work has focused on the nexus of Bible, literature, and culture. She is also an expert on questions of aesthetics and hermeneutics in literature.  Professor Pardes is the author of Countertraditions in the Bible: A Feminist Approach (Harvard University Press, 1992), The Biography of Ancient Israel: National Narratives in the Bible (University of California Press, 2000), Melville's Bibles (University of California, 2008); and co-editor of New Perspectives on Freud's Moses and Monotheism (Niemeyer, 2006).  Her current research focuses on the circulation of the Song of Songs in Israeli and American cultures.

Professor Yuval Shany
Professor Shany is the Hersch Lauterpacht Chair in International Law at the Law Faculty of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He also serves currently as the academic director of the Minerva Center for Human Rights, a director in the International Law Forum at The Hebrew University, a director in the Project on International Courts and Tribunals (PICT), a member of the steering committee of the DOMAC project (assessing the impact of international courts on domestic criminal procedures in mass atrocity cases) and as a senior research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute. Professor Shany has degrees in law from The Hebrew University (LL.B, 1995 cum laude), New York University (LL.M., 1997) and the University of London (Ph.D., 2001). He has published a number of books and articles on international courts and arbitration tribunals and other international law issues such as international human rights and international humanitarian law. Professor Shany has taught in a number of schools outside Israel, and is currently a visiting professor of law at Columbia University.

Dr. Kenneth W. Stein
At Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, Dr. Kenneth W. Stein is the William E. Schatten Professor of Contemporary Middle Eastern History, Political Science and Israeli Studies. Since coming to Emory in 1977, he founded and developed the International Studies Center, was the first director of the Carter Center (1983-1986), and established in 1998, the Institute for the Study of Modern Israel (ISMI). In 2006, he was a visiting professor of Political Science at Brown University. He is also the President of the Center for Israel Education, a non-profit organization focus on preparing curriculum and instruction about Israel and the Middle East for pre-collegiate settings and for adult learners.

Professor Stein is the author of numerous books and publications. Among them are Hebrew and English editions of Heroic Diplomacy: Sadat, Kissinger, Carter, Begin and the Quest for Arab-Israeli Peace (Routledge:1999); Making Peace Among Arabs and Israelis: Lessons from Fifty Years of Negotiating Experience (United States Institute for Peace:1991), and The Land Question in Palestine, 1917-1939 (North Carolina Press: 1984, 1985, and 2003). His journal articles include “Israel's Disengagement from the Gaza Strip: Precedents, Motivations, and Outcomes,” “After Arafat, What?” “Palestine’s Rural Economy,” and entries for Microsoft's Encarta Encyclopedia on the "PLO," "1973 October War," "Hamas," and "Intifadah." He wrote four chapters on the "Arab-Israeli Peace Process" appearing in the prestigious Middle East Contemporary Survey (Westview Press). His most recent journal articles include “ Advice to the Next President about the Middle East,” inFocus Jewish Policy Center Journal II no, 3 (Fall 2008) and “My Problem with Jimmy Carter's Book,” Middle East Quarterly, Vol 14, no. 2 (Spring 2007), pp. 3-15.

His honors at Emory University include recognition for internationalizing the curriculum. He is the recipient of the Emory Williams Teaching Award for undergraduate teaching, along with five other teaching awards. In addition to enhancing Israeli and Middle Eastern studies at Emory, as ISMI Director, he is engaged in pre-collegiate teacher training, curriculum construction, and long-distant learning on topics relating to Israel and the Middle East.

Dr. Stein received his undergraduate BA degree from Franklin and Marshall College and two Masters and his doctoral degree from The University of Michigan. He studied for two years at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Professor Sarah Stroumsa
Professor Sarah Stroumsa, the Alice and Jack Ormut Professor of Arabic Studies at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was appointed Rector of The Hebrew University in 2008, and previously served as Vice-Rector from 2003-2006. 

A graduate (cum laude) of The Hebrew University, Professor Stroumsa majored in Arabic Language and Literature and Middle Eastern Studies. She received her Ph.D with distinction from The Hebrew University in 1984. A Professor in the Department of Arabic Language and Literature and the Department of Jewish Thought, Professor Stroumsa has also held visiting faculty positions at prestigious universities, including in Montreal, Madrid, Paris, Philadelphia and at Harvard.

Professor Stroumsa’s area of academic concentration includes the history of philosophical and theological thought in Arabic in the early Islamic Middle Ages, Medieval Judaeo-Arabic literature, and Muslims and Jews in Islamic Spain.  She has authored many articles and books. Her most recent publication, Maimonides in his World: Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker, was published by Princeton University Press.

Professor Rony Wallach
Professor Rony Wallach is a member of the Department of Soil and Water Sciences at The Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He received his B.Sc, MSc. and D.Sc. in Agricultural Engineering from Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. His research focuses on both basic and applied aspects of soil physics and irrigation. A partial list of Wallach’s research topics includes hydraulic parameters for the optimization of irrigation and fertigation in field soils and containered media (greenhouses); the development of water repellent soils owing to irrigation with effluents and to different crops; development of non-invasive methods for determining plants’ momentary transpiration rate and its use for high throughput screening of plants with high resistance to heat, drought and salinity stresses; development of new criteria for efficient water use under shortage by of deficit irrigation. Professor Wallach is currently a visiting professor at The University of Texas at Austin.