The Business Side of Science

English
 

Weizmann graduate Dr. Anat Cohen-Dayag

At 43, Dr. Anat Cohen-Dayag is president and CEO of Compugen Ltd., a leading drug and diagnostic product candidate-discovery company.
 

Cohen-Dayag is responsible for the company’s strategic management and business policies, research and development, and financing activities. She works closely with the chairman of the board, Martin Gerstel, one of the company’s founders and owners, who is also a member of the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Board of Governors.
 
Cohen-Dayag became interested in business management while an undergraduate studying biology at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. During her studies she worked at ICL Industrial Products as a technical writer for one of their new projects – the development of biocides for water treatment.
 
When Cohen-Dayag completed her bachelor’s degree, ICL Industrial Products offered to sponsor her master’s degree studies in chemistry or business management. Cohen-Dayag: “Of course this offer appealed to me; but everyone there had a Ph.D., and I thought that I wanted to work for them as an equal. So I first applied for doctoral studies in biology at the Weizmann Institute of Science, and had the privilege of being accepted. To be surrounded by highly motivated people with endless curiosity makes the Institute the most fertile ground for young scientists.”
 
Cohen-Dayag came to the Institute in 1989 and, under the guidance of Prof. Israel Pecht, completed her master’s degree in the field of immune cell signaling. She went on, under the supervision of Prof. Michael Eisenbach, to conduct her Ph.D. research on the mechanisms of sperm cell movement toward the egg during fertilization.
 
“Since circumstances would not allow me to immediately conduct postdoctoral studies abroad, nearing the end of my Ph.D. I decided to turn to industry. I found work fairly quickly as an R&D scientist in Orgenics – a company that develops diagnostic products for infectious diseases. From that moment, I knew that I would not return to academia.”
 
In 2002, Cohen-Dayag moved to Compugen. Recently, under Gerstel and Cohen-Dayag’s management, Compugen signed a “discovery on demand” collaboration agreement with Pfizer, which will allow Pfizer to develop and commercialize Compugen’s predictive discovery of therapeutic peptide product candidates for three drug targets of interest to Pfizer.
 
Cohen-Dayag lives in Rehovot close to the Weizmann Institute. She is married with two children: Noa (16) and Gili (12).
 

 

Compugen

Compugen Ltd. cofounder Martin Gerstel
Compugen Ltd. was established in 1993 in Tel Aviv and employs 37 workers (65% in R&D). The company is traded on Nasdaq (CGEN) and on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. Its business is focused on developing and using predictive computer-based discovery platforms to identify therapeutic drug candidates and diagnostic biomarker candidates. It then uses experimental biological processes to validate product candidates. Once validated, the products are developed under collaborative agreements with various companies, among them: Bayer Schering Pharma, Merck & Co., Merck Serono, Hoffman La-Roche and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries.
 

 

 

Dr. Anat Cohen-Dayag
English
  • Feinberg Graduate School
  • Israel Pecht
  • Made at the Institute
  • Michael Eisenbach

Life Evolving

English
Dr. Gidi Shani
 

“I have always been intrigued by the harmonious nature of life; how every element in the universe resonates in perfect unison to construct the elusive life we all share,” says Dr. Gidi Shani, who recently acquired a passion for Zen meditation. Yet Shani’s intrigue was inspired well before this newfound fervor, going back to his high school biology lessons during which he became fascinated by the way evolution orchestrates its own life purpose – and so it would seem, Shani’s too.

Upon leaving high school, completing his army service and returning from an 18-month trip around the world, Shani continued his scientific journey, receiving a B.Sc. in biology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He veered off to do an MBA in finance and marketing. “I remember sitting contemplating a career in business versus science, but science is just so much more fascinating – always evolving and alive.”

Shani went on to pursue Ph.D. studies in molecular genetics at the Weizmann Institute of Science; his research focused on the identification and characterization of a novel family of protein kinases that is involved in a cell suicide mechanism called apoptosis.

“All the science I know, I learned at the Weizmann Institute. Over and above this, I learned how to think. My supervisor, Prof. Adi Kimchi, was my greatest inspiration. I sometimes find myself in situations where I catch myself thinking, ‘how would Adi approach this problem using imagination and inspiration as driving forces, but relying solely on facts and observations.’”

Shani graduated in 2005 and is now at the Burnham Institute, La Jolla, California, USA, conducting his second postdoc, which focuses on identifying the molecular events that lead to tumor metastasis – the main cause of cancer death – in which cancer cells dissociate from the original tumor and migrate via the blood stream to colonize distant organs.

Born in Israel in 1967, Shani grew up in Kibbutz Gesher Haziv in the Northern Galilee and is father to 10-year-old twin daughters, Chen and Ziv. When not meditating, Shani pursues hobbies at the opposite extreme, including surfing, motorcycling, hang gliding, kayaking, rock climbing and, more recently, free dance.

Dr. Gidi Shani
English
  • Adi Kimchi
  • Made at the Institute
  • Molecular Genetics

New Beginnings

English
Prof. Sara Fuchs, retired, but still researching

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prof. Sara Fuchs received her doctoral diploma, as did the others in her class, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. But her final oral presentation was at the Weizmann Institute – in those days given before an audience of family, friends, peers and outside examiners – and she recalls it with emotion: After the Feinberg dean had ceremoniously deemed her worthy of a doctorate, Fuchs’ father, an observant Jew, was moved to stand and repeat the “Shehekhianu” – the prayer for new beginnings.

Fuchs had married her high school sweetheart while completing her M.Sc. degree in chemistry and physics at the Hebrew University, but they moved to Rehovot when she began her doctoral studies at Weizmann under Prof. Michael Sela. There, she dove into research on synthetic antigens. Sela, she recalls, had a single room with a table in the middle that served as office and lab. Fuchs spent many hours there; and while completing her doctorate she also managed to give birth to two of her three children.

The family then traveled abroad for the first time, and Sara conducted postdoctoral research in the lab of Prof. Christian Anfinsen at the National Institutes of Health. (In 1972, he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.)

A few years after returning to Weizmann, Fuchs undertook collaborative research with Prof. Israel Silman that gave direction to the rest of her career. Investigating the enzyme acetylcholinesterase and its receptor, she made the discovery that the cell receptor for the neurotransmitter acetylcholine plays a role in the autoimmune disease myasthenia gravis. Fuchs turned her efforts to deciphering the receptor structure and the nature of and therapy for myasthenia gravis. She also investigated the role played by dopamine receptors in schizophrenia, pointing toward possible diagnostic tests. Though now “retired” and the grandmother of ten, Fuchs continues her research. On her office wall is a framed poster with photos of the many students who have been, she says, a valued part of her Institute career.


 

Prof. Sara Fuchs
English
  • Made at the Institute
  • Michael Sela
  • Myasthenia gravis
  • Sara Fuchs

Practical Math

English
 
Prof. Dan Dolev. A career in computer science

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prof. Dan Dolev considers himself lucky: A new scientific field that perfectly suited his academic interests emerged just when he was studying for his Ph.D. at the Weizmann Institute in the late 1970s. Computer science combined the use of mathematical reasoning and rigorous logic with the opportunity to apply both in practice – precisely the features Dolev found most compelling.

 
Dolev first became interested in science while in elementary school, thanks to a teacher who instilled in him curiosity and a love of nature. He was initially drawn to physics, then switched to mathematics. It was during his graduate studies in mathematics that he took a few introductory courses in computer science at the Feinberg Graduate School, the first academic institution in Israel to award degrees in this discipline. Dolev fell in love with the field. “I was captivated by the prospect of working on mathematical theory for the sake of its practical applications, not only for its theoretical beauty,” he says.
 
Since then, he has been focusing on research topics of relevance to real-life situations. In his doctoral studies, he investigated the synchronization of parallel computational processes, which in real life could help prevent several simultaneous processes from interfering with one another.
 
During postdoctoral studies at Stanford University he became acquainted with a broad range of computer science investigations and turned his attention to computer systems. Now, as a professor of computer science at the Hebrew University, he investigates the various theoretical and practical aspects of such systems. His applied projects have included the design of techniques that allow computer networks to function after they have been partially damaged – for example, as a result of a terrorist attack. Reflecting on his choice of career, Dolev notes that his initial encounter with computer science occurred largely by chance. “I happened to be in the right place at the right time,” he says.
Prof. Dan Dolev
English
  • Applied Mathematics and Computer Science
  • Feinberg Graduate School
  • Made at the Institute

Drug Pioneers

English

 

Prof. Ruth Arnon. At the temple of science

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prof. Ruth Arnon remembers the day she decided to join the Weizmann Institute. She was a young chemistry student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, then spread out in various locations around the city. One of her teachers, Prof. Aharon Katchalski-Katzir (brother of Prof. Ephraim Katzir, later the fourth president of Israel), led her class on a tour of the Institute. "There were only a few buildings then," recalls Arnon, "but the main building, with its stately entrance and well-equipped labs, seemed to me a temple of science. I went home and told my parents that this is where I wished to study and work."

Arnon would have to wait until she completed her M.Sc. and her army service. She began her studies under Prof. Ephraim Katzir and finished them under Prof. Michael Sela, who had recently taken up a position at the Institute. "I was Sela's first student. There was no Immunology Department then – it was we who began immunology research at the Institute – and there were almost no animal research facilities; I had to go to the university in Jerusalem to do the experiments."

She researched synthetic polymers that had first been developed by Ephraim Katzir. In Sela's lab, she developed protein-like polymers with defined immunological properties that could be used as research tools.

Following a postdoc in the U.S., she continued her synthetic polymer research, much of it with Sela. They discovered that one polymer could prevent the symptoms of an experimental disease, the animal model for multiple sclerosis, and went on to patent it. In the years since, Arnon has elucidated how the polymer, marketed under the name Copaxone®, works and explored new applications for the compound. She has also created a long-term synthetic flu vaccine, now under development in a start-up company; investigated the immunology of bilharzia, a parasitic disease; and worked on techniques for targeting cancer cells. Arnon has received numerous prizes, including the Wolf Prize in Medicine, and has served as Vice President of the Weizmann Institute.


 
Prof. Ruth Arnon
English
  • Copaxone®
  • Ephraim Katzir
  • Feinberg Graduate School
  • Immunology
  • Michael Sela
  • Ruth Arnon
  • Vaccine

Double Love

English
 
 
 
 
Dr. Daniela Amann-Zalcenstein. Life-changing decision
Dr. Daniela Amann-Zalcenstein began life in Germany in 1974. After receiving her master's degree in biotechnology in 1998, she worked as an engineer for Sequenom – a German company specializing in state-of-the-art genetic analysis technology.
 
When Sequenom received an order for a genotyping system from Prof. Doron Lancet of the Weizmann Institute's Molecular Genetics Department, the company's engineers hesitated to go to Israel, which they believed to be a war-torn, dangerous place, to install the equipment. All except for Daniela, who shouted: "I'll go!"
 
Amann-Zalcenstein spent two weeks at the Institute installing the equipment. Later that same year the system ran into some problems, and she returned to Israel to deal with them personally. But there was a customs strike, so the needed tools did not arrive. In the meantime, she participated in group meetings and lectures at the Institute. "I started to feel part of the Weizmann 'family.' By the time the tools arrived, I had fallen in love with the place and decided to do a Ph.D. here."
 
She commenced her Ph.D. studies in 2002 under the guidance of Prof. Jacqui Beckman, later transferring to Prof. Doron Lancet's group and graduating in 2008. Amann-Zalcenstein's research, in collaboration with Prof. Bernard Lerer, a psychiatrist at the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School, focused on discovering the genes that cause schizophrenia. Lerer works with an isolated Israeli-Arab population with a high incidence of schizophrenia. The team suspects that they possess a common schizophrenia gene inherited from a founding ancestor.This gene could be relatively easy to detect, as it should be shared by all members of the population. Although a mutation that could give rise to schizophrenia has not yet been found, Daniela and her colleagues think they have found two highly relevant candidate genes that may be associated with this disorder. These have been jointly patented by Hadasit and Yeda – the technology transfer arms of Hadassah Medical School and the Weizmann Institute, respectively.
 
The Weizmann Institute was not the only thing Daniela fell in love with. "While attending a party, I found myself chatting with a guy called Amir and learnt that he was also a student at the Institute. When I realized our relationship was becoming serious, I had to make a life-changing decision if we were to continue – whether to convert to Judaism." After almost two years of intensive Jewish studies, Amann-Zalcenstein converted and married – she recently gave birth to a baby boy, Jona Benjamin.
Dr. Daniela Amann-Zalcenstein
English
  • Doron Lancet
  • Immigrant scientist
  • Jacqui Beckman
  • Molecular Genetics
  • Schizophrenia

Desert Life

English
 
 
Prof. Yair Zarmi. new institute in the Negev
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
"Pioneering," "breakthrough," "laying the foundations" – such terms are often used to describe scientific research. But in the case of Prof. Yair Zarmi, they also apply to his decision to take part in the establishment of a new research institute for the study of the desert in 1979, on behalf of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
 
Zarmi's decision, supported by his wife, Shulamit, stemmed from a combination of idealistic and practical considerations. "The idea of participating in the creation of something new appealed to me, as did the breathtaking landscapes of the Negev." Along with changing his job and moving to Midreshet Ben-Gurion, he also switched research fields – from theoretical particle physics to environmental physics.
 
In his current studies, he tackles environmental problems and processes, such as the dynamics of floodwater flow, nonlinear waves and the physical aspects of growing algae as a future source of food or biofuel.
 
He recalls his Ph.D. studies at Weizmann in the team of Prof. Haim Harari as a defining experience, both personally and professionally. He met up with his former thesis adviser again in the early 1980s, when Harari visited the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research as chairman of thegovernment's academic budgeting committee. The desert facility then consisted of barely a dozen researchers, and Harari aptly summed up the state of its campus: "I came here wearing shiny shoes, and I'm leaving in dusty shoes."
 
Much floodwater has flowed since then through the Negev. The desert institute now has 75 researchers and 150 students, and the tiny solar research team that Zarmi initially joined is now an interdisciplinary department. When the institute's Albert Katz International School for Desert Studies was opened, Zarmi served as its second dean. While taking part in shaping its policy, he used the Feinberg Graduate School as a model, particularly in seeking to create an intimate atmosphere similar to the one prevailing at Feinberg in the days when he was a student.   
 
Prof. Yair Zarmi
English
  • Feinberg Graduate School
  • Haim Harari
  • Made at the Institute

The Science of Teaching

English
Prof. Yehudit (Judy) Dori then: already a mother
 
When Prof. Yehudit (Judy) Dori was growing up in Givatayim, near Tel Aviv, education was all-important. “It’s the one thing no one can take away from you,” her mother, Rysia, a survivor of Auschwitz, and her father, Moshe, who escaped Romania just before the war, told her. “My late mother,” says Dori, “lost everything, including her family. But in Israel she started over again and became a teacher. She inspired me to teach a new generation of students.”
 
Yehudit met her husband in a summer science camp at the Weizmann Institute. After earning a B.Sc. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, followed by army service, she was already the mother of a young daughter when she applied to the Feinberg Graduate School. She received her master’s degree in the life sciences but was interested in combining science with teaching, and Prof. David Samuel invited her to continue her studies in the Science Teaching Department.
Prof. Yehudit Dori recently at the Technion
 
Dori developed an innovative chemistry curriculum for nursing students, aimed at imparting practical knowledge rather than dry facts copied in a notebook. Her method, which approached chemistry through case studies, became the basis of her textbook, published by the Weizmann Institute. Following postdoctoral research in the U.S., Dori took up a position at the Technion in Haifa, where she recently was appointed a full professor. Her work there has most recently focused on using visualization in science education. She has mentored over 30 master and doctoral students, and has published about 50 articles and book chapters as well as 10 chemistry textbooks.
 
Dori has four daughters and two granddaughters – proof, she says, that “it’s difficult, but by no means impossible, for a woman to have a family and an academic career.”
 
Prof. Yehudit (Judy) Dori
English
  • Feinberg Graduate School
  • Made at the Institute
  • Science Teaching
  • Women in science

Sharing the Excitement

English
Dr. Moshe Rishpon. Mind behind the Science Garden
 
It took just a few words from a close friend and, instead of joining a research expedition to Antarctica – something he had planned while an undergraduate student of physics and meteorology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem – Dr. Moshe Rishpon found himself in a new lab entering the pioneering field of nuclear physics at the Weizmann Institute of Science.
 
Rishpon was one of the first to research the Mössbauer effect – a revolutionary physical phenomenon discovered by Rudolf L. Mössbauer, who received a Nobel Prize in 1961, the year that Rishpon commenced his M.Sc. studies.
 
While studying, Rishpon became involved in establishing extracurricular science education at the Institute – inspired by the Institute’s late Prof. Amos de-Shalit.

 

Dr. Moshe Rishpon then: in the nuclear physics lab

 

Forty-seven years later, Rishpon is still exploiting the Institute’s “treasures” to further science education: “It’s amazing to see how the Youth Activities Section (now Young@Science) has grown over the years – from a few army tents that we borrowed in 1964, to today’s International Village. At present, over 30,000 students meet with several hundred scientists every year for popular science lectures, mathematics olympiads, summer workshops and more.” This initiative has even inspired Israel’s universities to incorporate similar activities, though on a smaller scale.
 
“I am grateful to the Feinberg Graduate School for being so understanding, giving me extra time for my Ph.D. to allow me time to devote to this cause.”
 
In 1993, Rishpon was awarded the President of Israel’s Prize for his work with science-oriented youth; and, in 1998, he established and became director of the award-winning Clore Garden of Science – the Institute’s outdoor science museum. He also founded, two years later, the popular annual science festival at the Weizmann Institute.
 
 
Dr. Moshe Rishpon
English
  • Clore Garden of Science
  • Feinberg Graduate School
  • Made at the Institute
  • Moshe Rishpon
  • Nuclear physics
  • Science festival

Pioneering a New Field

English
Prof. Zeev Luz then: In the NMR lab
 
Prof. Zeev Luz of the Institute’s Chemical Physics Department had wanted to be a teacher, and when he completed high school in 1950, there was a shortage of science teachers in the newly born state. The principal of his high school offered him a university scholarship – on the condition that he return to the school to teach, and Luz jumped at the chance. Around the time he was finishing his studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he heard about a new research field at Weizmann: Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), the Institute’s first NMR spectrometer having been built in the mid 1950s.

Luz, the youngest member of the group, joined the laboratory in 1957, spending half the week teaching and the other half (including weekends, holidays and frequent teachers’ strikes) in the lab. He remembers the pioneering feeling and excitement of those days: The spectrometer was one of a kind, essentially “hand-made” using electronic equipment left behind by the British army. The group became one of the first to use WEIZAC – the electronic computer built around that time at the Institute – to analyze their data.
 
Prof. Zeev Luz at the annual Science Festival
 
The spectrometer enabled Luz to measure proton transfers – rapid chemical reactions that couldn’t then be measured by any other means. After completing his Ph.D., he went to Bell Labs in the U.S. for postdoctoral research and then returned to the Weizmann Institute’s Isotope Department. That early spectrometer was abandoned years ago, replaced by advanced “off-the-shelf” equipment, but NMR remains vibrant. Luz’s research involves dynamic processes and the molecular structure of materials. In an academic career spanning 50 years, he has been Dean of the Faculty of Chemistry and Vice President for Academic Affairs, and has received numerous prizes. But he has not forgotten his love for teaching – and he continues to give lectures to young people through Young@Science, visits to schools and participating in the annual Science Festival.      
 
 
Prof. Zeev Luz
English
  • Chemical Physics
  • Made at the Institute
  • NMR
  • WEIZAC
  • Zeev Luz

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