TEDx on Excellence in Science and Science Education at the Weizmann Institute

 

 

TEDx Weizmann Institute, a conference on excellence in science and science education, will be held on May 20 at the Weizmann Institute of Science. The Institute has been working for the past 50 years to advance science education in Israel. The conference will be led by the Davidson Institute of Science Education, the educational arm of the Weizmann Institute, together with scientists and staff of the Weizmann Institute and with the support of the Trump Foundation, which promotes the advancement of science and math education.  

The conference will include 10 short talks by top scientists, leaders in the field of science education and science teachers who have unique teaching strategies, as well as students who will share their inspiring experiences in learning science. The speakers will impart their own perspectives on science and science teaching, as well as their thoughts on motivating students, teachers and the general public to take an interest in science.

TEDx events are local, independently-organized conferences in the spirit of the original TED, which aim to stimulate discussion and ideas. The TEDx Weizmann Institute talks will be given in English, and they will be broadcast live online on the event’s website.

The speakers will be: Prof. Ada Yonath; Nobel Laureate in Chemistry; Prof. Oded Aharonson, Earth and Planetary Sciences Department; Dr. Maya Schuldiner, Molecular Genetics Department; and Dr. Ron Milo, Plant Sciences Department – all four of them from the Weizmann Institute. The others will be Dr. Abir Abed, a chemistry teacher; Kobi Shvarzbord, a physics teacher – both winners of the Trump Master Teacher Award; Dr. Rachel Knoll, a physics teacher who instituted a robotics program in Yeruham will speak together with Rotem Stahl, a student who participated in the program and is now an assistant for the program; Noam Ottolenghi, a student who won a prize in Intel ISEF for his thesis; Dr. Efrat Furst, a neurobiologist who is involved in science education will speak together with Mickey Choma, who teaches juggling dancing and fencing; Dr. Ran Peleg, a chemical engineer, educator and actor; and Dr. Ayelet Baram-Tsabari, head of the biology and the science communications groups in the Science and Technology Education Department of the Technion.