Talpiot

Confirmed Speakers

• Zvia Agur
  In 1999 Professor Zvia Agur founded the basic research Institute for Medical Biomathematics, IMBM, where she serves as president and conducts academic scientific research focusing on the use of mathematical models for improving oncotherapy. Agur founded Optimata Ltd. in 2000, a biotech company dedicated to the development and use of new technologies for streamlining cancer drug development and for personalizing cancer therapy. Agur serves as Optimata’s Chief Scientific Officer and Chairperson. A well-known international biomathematician, Prof. Agur leads Optimata's research maintaining its leadership as a cutting-edge science-based company. Prior to the establishment of IMBM and Optimata, Prof. Agur co-founded the Israeli Society of Theoretical and Mathematical Biology (ISTMB) and the European Society of Mathematical Biology (ESMTB) in the aim of increasing public awareness for the significance of biomathematics to biomedical innovation. She served as President (ISTMB) and Board member (ESMTB) for over six years. Agur has held academic positions at the Weizmann Institute and Tel Aviv University in Israel, along with international visiting fellowships with Oxford University, Imperial College and others. Prof. Agur has made major contributions to the theory of disease dynamics, chemotherapy optimization and vaccination policies. Her original and innovative research work has won national awards, and has been published in major scientific journals. She serves as editor of scientific journals, has organized leading international conferences and supervises numerous graduate students. Prof. Agur holds a PhD in mathematical biology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Université Libre de Bruxelles.
• Avshalom C. Elitzur
  Avshalom C. Elitzur has earned his PhD under the supervision of Yakir Aharonov. He is a member of Iyar, The Israeli Institute for Advanced Research. The Elitzur-Vaidman bomb-testing experiment, listed by the New Scientist magazine among "the seven wonders of quantum mechanics," is the single experiment in physics' history that makes one smile. His more recent discovery, the Quantum Liar Paradox, is presented in this talk. Elitzur's research spans over quantum measurement, Special and General Relativity and the nature of spacetime. His Spacetime-Dynamics hypothesis aspires to attain theoretical physics' holy grail, namely, unifying Relativity and Quantum theories. It describes the quantum interaction as preceding the emergence of the spacetime region within which it "occurs," thereby, hopefully, better accounting for the relativistic and quantum oddities of mass and energy. Elitzur's other papers include novel contributions to evolutionary theory and to philosophy of mind. He also writes on environmental and moral issues.
• Maurit Beeri
  Maurit Beeri, M.D. MPA is Deputy Director General and Director of the Pediatric Rehabilitation Medical Day Care at Alyn Pediatric and Adolescent Rehabilitation Center in Jerusalem. She also heads the Multidisciplinary Clinic for Infants and Children with Feeding Disorders. Dr. Beeri graduated from medical school and trained as a pediatrician at Hebrew University - Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem. She directed a home-hospitalization program for the largest health provider in Israel, consulted at the Familial Dysautonomia center at Hadassah and helped establish a hospice ward for ventilated children at the Hertzog Hospital in Jerusalem. Dr Beeri is a Wexner Israel Fellowship Alumnus, having graduated from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in 2009. Dr. Beeri is involved in promoting the concept of Cultural Competency in Health, initiating a program to make Alyn Jerusalem the first culturally competent hospital in Israel. She is also involved in various health and social initiatives to promote the care and rights of children with special needs, including the Early Intervention Coalition, which represents over 60 organizations and associations for children with special needs. Dr Beeri is married to Ronen, a cardiologist who heads the Cardiovascular Research Center at Hadassah Medical Centre, is the mother of three boys, and serves as personal assistant to two cats.
• Oren Harman
  Oren Harman is the Chair of the Graduate Program in Science, Technology and Society at Bar Ilan University. He was trained in history and biology at the Hebrew University, Oxford, and Harvard, and is a historian of biology and a writer. He teaches evolutionary theory, the interplay between scientific, social, and philosophical thought, and writing. He is especially fascinated by the juxtaposition of the transcendence of nature's laws with the frailties and peculiarities of the transient human experience. His books include The Man Who Invented the Chromosome (Harvard, 2004), Rebels, Mavericks and Heretics in Biology [with Michael Dietrich] (Yale, 2008), and The Price of Altruism (W.W. Norton, 2010) (Bodley Head/Random House, 2010). He is a frequent contributor to The New Republic, and the co-creator of the Israeli Oscar-nominated documentary series "Did Herzl Really Say That?". His work has been featured in The New York Times, The London Times, Nature, Science, The Economist, Forbes, New Scientist, Times Higher Education, Discover, The Huffington Post, and many others. He grew up in Jerusalem and now lives in Tel Aviv.
• Joseph Dadoune
  Photographer, video artist and director, who has presented works by various media: photography, installation and video, and works in recent years in the cinematic medium. He is the first Israeli director who cooperated with the Louvre, who allowed him it to film on premises. Joseph Dadoune's films are an ongoing odyssey between different geographical and mental regions in Israel and Europe, between childhood landscapes in Ofaqim, and Mediterranean landscapes, between the southern Negev desert landscapes and provinces of holiness, Mysticism, East and West. Josef Dadon, a resident of Ofaqim, immigrated to Israel with his mother in 1981 at the age of five from his hometown of Nice in France. His experiences as a lonely yeshiva student in the southern development town, sitting in an abandoned desert landscape, left considerable traces in his work that combine historical insight – as well as a cultural and personal statement. In 2008 he initiated the social-cultural project "B'midbar" (desert), working with the teens on photographing of a film about the social geo-political and military implications of their place. On the individual level – recording an autobiographical illustration of the experience of emptyness is reflected through the empty spaces of the abandoned factories and cinema from the eighties. Actions with nature and the optimistic desert light, facing the harsh reality. Peripheral edges of the State of Israel - a microcosm of fragile Israeli identity, the complex reality of the divided Israeli society who is divided and characterized by tension between state and religion, sacred and profane, and a growing sense of fear and violence as well as social and economic gaps. Through a poetic cinematic language that does not avoid taking a stand, Dadon intertwines an artistic-social agenda, looking to break the boundaries of the periphery, making her voice heard, and giving attention to its cultural fabric, to describe the human architectural and geographical landscape, and generate discussion on the "face" of Israeli society and culture emerging there. Project "B'midbar" is a personal creation with a social dimension, that draws its sources from the reality and the local culture.
• Diana Livshitz
  
• Michael Yosefin