Since 1970, the population sizes of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles have declined by 68% – or more. (photo from CABGU)
Over the past 24 years, Living Planet Report has been published biannually by the Zoological Society of London and the World Wildlife Fund. It highlights the major declines that some 20,811 vertebrate populations, representing 4,392 species monitored around the world, have experienced globally. The 2020 report (which is the latest one) showed that, on average, the population sizes of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles declined by 68% between 1970 and 2016.
As large as that decline is, a paper published in the journal Nature last month by a group of scientists based in Israel – Drs. Gopal Murali and Gabriel Caetano from Ben-Gurion University were lead authors of the paper – shows that it might greatly underestimate the situation.
As part of their research, the authors analyzed the overlap of the monitored populations with protected areas. They then compared these to a random sample of locations and the placement of the global network of protected areas. They found that the populations sampled in Living Planet are much more likely to be found inside protected areas than would be expected to occur by chance.
“This is truly alarming,” said Caetano. “If populations inside protected areas – where we focus a lot of our conservation efforts – are doing so badly, those that reside outside protected areas are probably worse off. The true situation of nature – mostly not monitored or protected – may be much worse.”
The authors highlight the need for proper accounting of the status of nature when making generalizations (as they have done in their paper). However, they also advocate for greater monitoring of populations and species in different locations and stress that many animal populations and natural environments will be lost forever without concentrated and direct action.
The world is experiencing massive transformations that are expected to intensify in the coming decades and have fundamental and dire consequences for the natural world. Prof. Shai Meiri from Tel Aviv University, also a co-author of the Nature article, said, “Rather than discourage us from action, we feel that our work should be viewed as a call to arms. Rapid and comprehensive changes in how we view our relationships with nature are needed – and the onus is on us to make sure they happen before it is too late.”
– Courtesy Canadian Associates of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, B.C. & Alberta Region
Most everyone on the planet has now heard of mRNA, thanks to the vaccines against COVID-19 from Pfizer and Moderna, which are based on messenger RNA. But, before mRNA was used to address COVID, research was conducted into how it could fight cancer. Now, researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev have discovered a key connection between mRNA, peptide proteins and tumour progression.
Messenger RNA codes for different proteins, each with a unique function. There are both “long” and “short” peptides. Until now, scientists were not sure if short peptides had any biological function.
Prof. Etta Livneh of BGU’s Shraga Segal Department of Immunology, Microbiology and Genetics has shown that single short peptides in fact have a very important role – as a kinase inhibitor that can slow tumour growth and invasion, cancer cell survival and metastasis.
Proteins (and protein kinases in particular) propagate signals that carry instructions to the cells and dictate cell fate. There are more than 500 different kinases in the human body.
With cancer, a kinase erroneously tells the cells to divide and reproduce in a rapid and uncontrollable manner. But the flipside is also true: if a kinase can be inhibited, it should block the proliferation of cancer cells.
And that’s “just the tip of the iceberg,” said Livneh, whose discovery has been a decade in the making. “Now that we know that at least some peptides have a biological function, we can begin to discover the roles of many more.”
Kinase inhibitors are already one of the hottest areas of cancer research, in some cases replacing chemotherapy. Livneh’s research will allow scientists to better understand how to control this cancer-fighting technology.
The research was supported by a grant from the Israel Science Foundation and published in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America).
Israel21cis a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev ranks among the top 50 universities graduating successful entrepreneur company founders from its undergraduate programs, according to Pitchbook, a financial data firm that publishes annual data. BGU moved up two spots from last year’s rankings, marking its third consecutive year on the top 50 list.
BGU has graduated 314 founders whose companies have raised a total of $8.3 billion, according to Pitchbook. Among the top five companies led by BGU entrepreneurs in capital raised are Deel ($630m), Fireblocks ($492m), Exaware ($420m), Fabric ($336m) and Hibob ($277m).
BGU’s entrepreneurial focus is led by Yazamut 360°, a suite of program offerings designed to enhance BGU’s academic curriculum and infuse entrepreneurship into the DNA of a BGU student. Yazamut 360° established Cactus Capital – Israel’s first student-run venture capital fund. It has also created two accelerators, one focused on technology entrepreneurship (Oazis) and one on e-commerce. Oazis pairs faculty members with chief executive officers to create companies through BGN Technologies. The accelerators serve as a resource for all entrepreneurs on campus through professional mentoring, financial consulting and technological consulting.
The 2021 Pitchbook university rankings are based on the number of founders whose companies received a first round of venture funding between Jan. 1, 2006, and Oct. 31, 2021.
– Courtesy Canadian Associates of BGU, B.C. and Alberta Region
A German translation of the Talmud, and the first translation of the book ever completed by a single person, is now available on Sefaria, a free nonprofit online library of Jewish texts. The translation by scholar Lazarus Goldschmidt was the first German translation of the Talmud and was released in 1935. While it is used in German Jewish studies departments and universities, it had not been widely accessible to the general public until now.
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A celebration of the release took place virtually on Oct. 24. One of the speakers was Penny Goldsmith, Goldschmidt’s eldest granddaughter. Goldsmith is a longtime anti-poverty community worker in Vancouver, and owns a small independent publishing company, Lazara Press, named after her grandfather, who died a few months before she was born. She spoke of her grandfather’s books, “beautiful typographical masterpieces.”
“Grandfather was a type and book designer,” she said. Among his books were literature and poetry, including a collection of poetry he wrote in his early 20s, in Hebrew, “a very unusual choice,” Goldsmith noted, “as Hebrew at that time was reserved for religious study only.”
Goldschmidt was a scholar of Near Eastern languages and, in addition to the Talmud, he translated other religious texts, including a Hebrew translation of the Ethiopic Book of Enoch and a German translation of the Koran. Born in Lithuania, he learned German at the age of 18. His translation of the Talmud took 39 years to complete and he continued to make revisions after publication. He was also a collector of rare books and his extensive collection is now part of the Royal Library in Copenhagen.
After the Goldschmidt Talmud translation became public domain in January 2021, a team of four led by Igor Itkin, a rabbinical student at Rabbinerseminar zu Berlin, integrated its 9,434 pages of text into Sefaria’s free online library. The team’s work included manually linking sections of the translation to corresponding Talmud texts in English and Hebrew/Aramaic already in the Sefaria library. The connections allow scholars, educators and others to navigate between the translations and connect them to the larger library of Jewish scholarship. The team’s work was supported by a grant from the Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe.
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The Rivals and Other Stories by Jonah Rosenfeld, translated from the Yiddish by Vancouver’s Rachel Mines – who recently retired from Langara College’s English department – has been selected by the Yiddish Book Centre as one of its picks for the 2022 Great Jewish Books Club. The book is available through the Yiddish Book Centre’s store and other online booksellers, including its publisher, Syracuse University Press, which is offering The Rivals at a 50% discount until Dec 1, 2021 (press.syr.edu).
Rosenfeld was a prolific and popular writer from the early 1900s until his death in 1944. Although his writing received critical praise, very little was translated into English until the publication of The Rivals. His stories foreground social anxiety, cultural dislocation, family dysfunction and the search for meaningful relationships – themes just as relevant today as they were to their original audiences. (See jewishindependent.ca/stories-that-explore-the-mind.)
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The National Autism Research Centre of Israel (photo from Canadian Associates of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev)
The Azrieli Foundation recently donated $15.6 million Cdn to the National Autism Research Centre of Israel, a collaboration between scientists from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and clinicians from Soroka University Medical Centre (SUMC), both in the city of Be’er Sheva, Israel. The centre, originally established by the Ministry of Science and Technology, is dedicated to translational research that aims to revolutionize diagnosis techniques and interventions for autism and other neurodevelopmental conditions. In honour of the donation, the centre has been renamed the Azrieli National Centre for Autism and Neurodevelopment Research.
A dedicated facility inside SUMC will be constructed that will double the space for working with children with autism spectrum disorder and performing research. It will house genetics/bioinformatics, biomarker-detection and neuroimaging labs. Existing data collection will be expanded to many autism clinics throughout Israel, where multiple types of clinical and behavioural data, biological samples (e.g., DNA and blood samples) and neuroimaging data will be collected. This data collection will enable the rapid expansion of the National Autism Database, which will triple in size within five years. New faculty members, post-docs and graduate students, as well as scientific, clinical, technical and administrative support staff will be recruited to manage the data collection and sharing effort.
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Naomi Azrieli, chief executive officer, Azrieli Foundation Canada, and co-chair, Azrieli Foundation Israel, at the Nov. 7 announcement in Montreal, which took place concurrently with the announcement in Israel. (photo by PBL Photography)
The Weizmann Institute of Science and Weizmann Canada recently received a donation of $50 million US from the Azrieli Foundation, to enable catalytic brain research with the establishment of the Azrieli Institute for Brain and Neural Sciences. A longstanding supporter of the institute, this latest donation adds to past philanthropic investments of nearly $30 million US by the foundation towards Weizmann research facilities and fellowships.
Weizmann’s Azrieli Institute for Brain and Neural Sciences, which will be located at the Weizmann Institute campus in Rehovot, Israel, will promote the full spectrum of neuroscience research, from basic, curiosity-driven studies to translational work of high clinical relevance, with global impact. The donation will enable the construction of a new building that will serve as a hub for neuroscience activities, facilities and technologies.
The Azrieli Institute will focus on research in the development of neural networks; perception and action; mental and emotional health, positive neuroscience; learning, memory and cognition; the aging brain; neurodegeneration; injury and regeneration; theoretical and computational neuroscience; development of innovative neurotechnologies; and integrative brain disorders.
With gratitude to HaShem, mazel tov to Shmuel Hart (King David High School Class of 2016) and Reut Rappoport on their joyous and spirited wedding at Sakoya Gardens (just outside Jerusalem) on June 15, 2021. Elated parents – Alexander Hart and Kathryn Selby of Vancouver, and Rabbi Jason and Meira Rappoport of Alon Shvut, Gush Etzion, Israel – are so very proud of the newlyweds. The couple resides in Jerusalem, Israel, and both are currently studying at Hebrew University.
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Now in its seventh year, the Canadian Jewish Literary Awards recognizes and rewards the finest Canadian writing on Jewish themes and subjects. This year, the awards ceremony, which took place on Oct. 17, was presented on Zoom and is available for viewing on the Canadian Jewish Literary Awards YouTube channel.
The winner in the fiction category was Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted: The Ballad of Motl the Cowboy by Gary Barwin (Random House Canada). It follows a wannabe cowboy, Motl, as he and his mother flee Vilna and the Nazis’ massacre of the Jews. The ensuing events, characters and horror are met by Motl with humorous absurdity in the face of tragedy.
Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) by Menachem Kaiser, which tells the story of the author’s quest to reclaim a residential building his family owned in Poland before the Shoah, won for best biography.
Lisa Richter won the poetry prize for Nautilus and Bone (Frontenac House). A reimagining of the unconventional life of Yiddish poet Anna Margolin, this collection also won the 2020 National Jewish Book Award for Poetry, the first time a Canadian poet has ever received the American honour.
For children and youth literature, the winner was Osnat and Her Dove (Levine Querido) by Sigal Samuel, with illustrations by Vali Mintzi. It is based on a true story. Although girls in 15th-century Mosul were told, “Reading is for boys,” Osnat convinces her rabbi father to teach her to read. As she grows older, she asks her father to seek a groom who will allow her to study Torah, and she helps run her father’s religious school while raising her own children. After her father’s death and, later, her husband’s, Osnat becomes the school’s leader, making her the world’s first female rabbi.
For scholarship, the awardee was Survivors: Children’s Lives After the Holocaust by Rebecca Clifford (Yale University Press), which is an exploration of the life trajectories of 100 children who were 10 years old or younger at the time of their liberation in 1945. Through archives found in 12 countries, including Canada, and through personal interviews, the author follows the impact the events of the Holocaust had on their lives, and on those who educated them.
In the category of writing about the Holocaust, the winner was In the Lights of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos (William Morrow) by Judy Batalion. The book points out the lack of recognition and the misrepresentation of women’s roles during the war, the actions they took to fight, as well as their crucial importance.
The Canadian Jewish Literary Awards jury for 2021 was Edward Trapunski, Pierre Anctil, Rona Arato, Miriam Borden, Rita Davies, Alain Goldschläger and Adam Sol.
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev student village (photo from CABGU)
Fourteen new buildings have been added to the student village at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) in Israel. It will allow more than 1,000 students options from studio apartments to married student housing.
“The student village lets them choose their living quarters in accordance with their personal preference,” said BGU president Prof. Daniel Chamovitz, “while everything they could need is nearby: the north campus and the conference centre, which are in development, a hotel for visiting students and faculty, stores and coffee shops … and the high-tech park, the train station and the university’s country club are just a short walk away.”
The student village offers apartments suitable for religious students and those with disabilities. Any registered student is eligible to apply for a room. The rooms come fully furnished with a smart TV, beds, closets, desks, a full kitchen, a sitting area and a solar water heater. Full maintenance service is offered, as is 24/7 security, a 24-hour service hotline, bicycle rooms, laundry rooms, and more.
“Situated in the country’s southern region, the university is known to be a destination institution,” said Mark Mendelson, chief executive officer of Canadian Associates of BGU. “This means that students who attend the university also live either on campus or in the communities in and around the university, including the city of Be’er Sheva. In addition, almost 60% of the undergraduate student body volunteers in their respective neighbourhoods, which is really something very unique to BGU and has brought outstanding community involvement to the citizens of Be’er Sheva.”
Dr. Odeya Cohen (photo by Dani Machlis/BGU) and Dr. Rami Puzis (photo courtesy)
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers discovered patterns of significantly decreased joy, increased sadness, fear and disgust among healthcare professionals (HCP) in the largest social media study to track emotional changes and discourse during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the study, a multidisciplinary BGU team analyzed more than 53,000 HCP tweets from followers of several hundred Twitter accounts of healthcare organizations and common HCP points of interest. The most significant topics HCPs discussed during the pandemic were COVID-19 information, public health and social values, medical studies, as well as daily life and food. Approximately 44% of their discourse was about professional topics during the entire 2020 year.
The research indicates data-driven approaches for analyzing social media networks are helpful as a method for exploring professional health insights during both routine clinical situations and emergencies. The study will be published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research. A preprint is already available online. It was funded by the BGU Coronavirus Taskforce and by an Israeli Ministry of Science and Technology coronavirus research grant.
“Our findings, which track increasing sadness and decreasing joy, should be a warning to health organizations of the importance of better mental health support to help HCPs cope with the emotional consequences of the pandemic,” say Dr. Rami Puzis of BGU’s software and information systems engineering department (SISE) and Dr. Odeya Cohen of the department of nursing. “Most interestingly, HCP tweets expressed greater levels of fear just prior to pandemic waves in 2020. This indicates that many HCPs, beyond those working in epidemiology, observed, and were adequately qualified to anticipate pandemic development.”
Puzis goes on to say, “This suggests that decision-makers could benefit from investing additional resources into listening to the broader HCP community to track and anticipate bottom-up pathways for developing health crises.”
– Courtesy Canadian Associates of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Israeli actor Shira Haas was the featured guest at the Canadian Associates of Ben Gurion University of the Negev’s virtual gala July 7. (photo byShula Klinger)
On July 7, the Canadian Associates of Ben Gurion University of the Negev held their second virtual fundraising gala. More than 1,200 participants logged on to the An “Unorthodox” National Virtual Gala event, which raised $850,000 for brain research at BGU’s Zlotowski Centre for Neuroscience.
The Zlotowski Centre is a group of researchers dedicated to finding cures and management tools for neurodegenerative diseases including Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, ALS and epilepsy.
As part of the gala event, attendees received a special dinner package. (photo by Shula Klinger)
Months in the making, the virtual gala was the work of a countrywide team of BGU staffers and numerous volunteers. Every participating household in Metro Vancouver received sweet and savoury kosher treats from Café 41. The accompanying gift box also brought olive oil from the Negev, a copy of Deborah Feldman’s memoir, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots (Simon & Schuster, 2012), appetizer dishes and a commemorative cutting board.
Danny Chamovitz, BGU’s president, spoke about the work of BGU’s academics in general, in disciplines ranging from public health to brain research. Canadian Senator Linda Frum conducted the feature interview – with multiple-award-winning actor Shira Haas.
Describing herself as “very, very shy” as a young person, Haas said she had considered psychology or graphic design as professions, until a casting director approached her on Facebook. Sixteen years old at the time, she said, with respect to that first project, “I understood that this is what I want to do, it was like the door to Narnia.”
Haas does not take her success or popularity for granted. “It was always a dream to work internationally, in different languages, for different audiences, but I never imagined it,” she said. “It was always about the work. I am very, very lucky to be in this position.” She added, “My parents deserve to be talked about! They are the most supportive and amazing parents.”
Known for taking on demanding roles, Haas approaches acting in a scholarly fashion. She studied musculoskeletal diseases to play a terminally ill woman in the film Asia, and researched Russian, Yiddish and Charedi culture for the series Shtisel and Unorthodox. She said she finds beauty in hard work, explaining that Asia was “challenging in the most beautiful way. It was a lot of physical and emotional work, and very personal for me.”
When playing a part, Haas said she is motivated by two things. First, she must be passionate about the role because “that’s what brings everything alive.” About Shtisel, she said, “I fell in love with it immediately.”
Her second principle is to portray “subjects that matter to me.”
Haas’s idealism was evident in the way she spoke about Asia. “It’s not really about death,” she said. “It’s about relationships, about appreciating the time we have and what we do with it. The highest form of art is to bring light to the darkness.”
About Unorthodox, she said, “It didn’t occur to me that it is about the Orthodox world. It was just a story about people who want to be loved, their doubts, desires and failures.”
And Shtisel, she noted, had a huge impact on people all over the world. The show helped change people’s view of Orthodox communities, she said: “It’s universal.”
Of her forthcoming portrayal of Golda Meir in her early years, Haas described a woman with “a very interesting life. She was very passionate, with many dreams and desires.”
Since David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir were friends, she laughed, “this event was meant to be!”
Haas spoke of her personal connection to BGU. Her sister studied at the university and a close friend is there now. Haas wanted to participate in the gala for several reasons, including, she said, “I am Jewish, I am an Israeli. I want to keep on doing events like this! I am even more proud to do it for Ben-Gurion.”
As for the brain research being conducted at BGU, which the gala funds will support, there has already been groundbreaking progress. Claude Broski’s group has identified a protein that can slow down the degeneration brought on by Parkinson’s. The social robots developed by Shelley Levy-Tzedek and her team will have an impact on stroke patient recovery – the robots offer motivation, feedback and performance-tracking during the rehabilitation phase. Epilepsy researchers are developing wearable hardware and software that could alert patients to an oncoming seizure, an hour before it happens. And Deborah Toiber’s Alzheimer’s team is exploring questions about brain aging, such as, Why does the disease affect so many of us, when only 5% of cases are genetic?
David Berson, executive director of CABGU, British Columbia and Alberta, said, “It has been very gratifying to see how the Metro Vancouver community has embraced BGU students and faculty in recent years. Many new supporters have stepped forward during the last year to engage with us. We are especially grateful to our community partners, who helped us promote this Unorthodox event.”
Among the many contributors to the gala were board members Jay Eidelman and Si Brown. Rachelle Delaney helped Berson with the goodie boxes at the crack of dawn on July 7, while volunteer drivers delivered the boxes. Adrian Cantwell and I were co-chairs for the Metro Vancouver team.
Shula Klingeris an author and journalist living in North Vancouver. She was Metro Vancouver co-chair of the CABGU gala with Adrian Cantwell.
Mitchell Oelbaum, national president of Canadian Associates of Ben-Gurion University. (photo from in.bgu.ac.il)
Raising nearly $800,000 at a not-for-profit gala is no small feat, nor is having more than 1,200 people register for an event. When you add a pandemic to the mix and make it a virtual event, one might assume that it would be impossible to come close! But that’s precisely what the Canadian Associates of Ben-Gurion University (CABGU) did in just seven weeks.
“We are a lean but unbelievably keen staff at CABGU, with an incredibly generous and committed group of lay leaders,” said Mark Mendelson, CABGU’s chief executive officer. “Achievements like this make me so proud!”
Mendelson knew that every detail of the event was accounted for, beginning with the star attraction. Israeli actress Shira Haas, star of the popular Netflix series Shtisel and Unorthodox, recently nominated for both a Golden Globe and an Emmy, is the featured speaker. Fresh off her recent press tour for the newly released movie Asia, she will be joining the event live from Israel. Haas will be taking questions from Canada’s Sen. Linda Frum, who will be moderating the conversation along with Prof. Daniel Chamovitz, BGU’s president.
CABGU’s An “Unorthodox” National Virtual Gala for Brain Research at BGU raises money for the Canada Fund to Advance Brain Research. “The fund will go a long way in assisting researchers at the university with conducting groundbreaking and out-of-the-box research,” said Mitchell Oelbaum, national president of CABGU.
“CABGU launched the Canada Fund to Advance Brain Research at BGU in April,” added Mendelson. “We know that there is a strong appetite for the subject of brain research because so many of us know at least one person, if not more, who is impacted by neurodegenerative diseases here in Canada.”
Tickets for the July 7 virtual gala are sold out. However, a few sponsorships are still available at bengurion.ca.
– Courtesy Canadian Associates of Ben-Gurion University
Shira Haas is the featured guest at the July 7 event organized by Canadian Associates of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. (photo from CABGU)
Israeli actress Shira Haas, star of the popular Netflix series Shtisel and Unorthodox, has been busy in recent months. Not only is she preparing to take on the role of a young Golda Meir in the upcoming series Lioness, executive produced by Barbra Streisand, but she is also the featured guest at the Canadian national virtual gala in support of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) on July 7.
An “Unorthodox” National Virtual Gala for Brain Research, organized by Canadian Associates of Ben-Gurion University (CABGU), BGU’s Canadian fundraising arm, will raise money for the Canada Fund to Advance Brain Research.
“We are thrilled to share this exciting announcement with our community,” said Mitchell Oelbaum, national president of CABGU.
“According to the World Health Organization, there are approximately 50 million active cases of dementia worldwide, with an estimated 10 million new cases being added each year. Ten million people battle Parkinson’s each year globally. And, according to the World Stroke
Organization, 13 million people suffer from stroke annually. We wanted to do our part to help improve the chances of finding a cure for these debilitating diseases.”
The numbers are large, and there are no signs of a slowdown. That is why the fund was established by CABGU, with the goal of supporting groundbreaking and cutting-edge research for neurodegenerative diseases at the university’s Zlotowski Centre for Neuroscience.
“We are getting closer to determining the causes of age-related neurodegenerative diseases,” explained Dr. Debra Toiber of the department of life sciences in the faculty of natural sciences at BGU. “It’s an exciting time to be a scientist and uncovering the mechanisms of aging.”
Toiber is one of 67 researchers at the Zlotowski Centre. Her lab recently discovered that the SIRT6 protein is critical for the prevention of neurodegeneration, which can lead to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Colleague Dr. Shelly Levy-Tzedek’s lab studies the impact of age and disease on the control of body movement and how best to employ robotics to facilitate a fast and efficient rehabilitation process. Meanwhile, Dr. Claude Brodski, also with the Zlotowski Centre for Neuroscience, is currently conducting a study, albeit in its early stages, that may offer a disease-modified drug target to address the impact of Parkinson’s. While these findings are encouraging, more research needs to be conducted.
“CABGU launched the Canada Fund to Advance Brain Research at BGU in April,” said CABGU chief executive officer Mark Mendelson. “Our team has been hard at work ever since, and there is a strong appetite for this subject matter here in Canada. The sad reality is that we all know someone, whether it is a relative, a friend or a neighbour, who is struggling with one of these devastating brain diseases.”
The national virtual gala is already more than 50% sold out. To learn how to become a sponsor or to purchase tickets, head to bengurion.ca.
Ben-Gurion University’s Prof. Amir Sagi, left, and Dr. Amit Savaia have found a way to use shrimp to fight a deadly parasitic disease in Nigeria. (photo from BGU)
This year, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev plans to launch a new school that will specialize in climate change research, mitigation and environmental sustainability. It will also offer a graduate program with a cross-section of specialties.
BGU’s three campuses house an enrolment of 20,000 students and a faculty of 4,000. Its areas of expertise range far and wide, and, among other things, the university has become known as a go-to place for figuring out how to address one of the 21st century’s biggest threats: climate change.
For BGU president Daniel Chamovitz, the university’s growing reputation isn’t that much of a surprise. “Because what have we been doing in the last 60 years?” he asked rhetorically. “We have been learning how to survive – not to survive, how to thrive in the desert.”
Prof. Daniel Chamovitz, president of Ben-Gurion University. (photo from BGU)
Chamovitz’s own expertise is in genetics and plant biology. Originally from Aliquippa, Pa., he is most recently known for his studies in plant development and for his book What a Plant Knows: A Field Guide to the Senses, which has been published in 18 languages.
The realization that the university already has a strong foothold in environmental and sustainability research, Chamovitz said, is what led to its new mandate to become the world’s authority on climate change and sustainability.
A long history
For Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, the Negev was always Israel’s greatest untapped resource. It was the place, he predicted, that the Jewish homeland would sow their greatest accomplishments. A desert that spans more than 60% of the country’s land mass, the Negev would hold the answers to Israel’s most pressing problems of the day: how to grow enough food to feed a nation, generate sufficient energy to power cities and harness enough water to turn brown deserts green.
But building a sustainable nation, he warned, one that could benefit from a desert that receives less than 200 millimetres of rainfall per year wouldn’t be simple. “It is incumbent upon Israel’s scientists to reveal the secrets of nature that are unique to our land,” he said. The Negev, he insisted, was the perfect environment for an institute of study that could solve the world’s most basic – and challenging – problems of existence.
Ben-Gurion’s visionary thinking was the catalyst for many of Israel’s earliest environmental accomplishments, including desalination and energy generation using seawater, steps that would be critical to Israel’s much-needed water technology. Both projects were developed in the 1960s, at a research facility in the town of Be’er Sheva, a Bedouin settlement at the northern tip of the Negev. The institute that gave rise to these early innovations would eventually become BGU.
BGU’s new school
Two years ago, when he was hired as president of BGU, Chamovitz told the Jewish Independent he had conducted a “bottom-up” assessment of all of the departments and their areas of specialization. He wanted to know what their strengths and weaknesses were.
“[We] identified over 150 researchers dealing with various issues of sustainability and climate change,” Chamovitz said. “And, in every discipline. Not only in our institutes of water, energy and desert agriculture – that’s the low-lying fruit – but also in engineering and in civil engineering, where we develop energy-efficient building material and methods.
“It was clear to everyone that the field of sustainability and climate change was what sets Ben-Gurion University apart from every other university in Israel.”
That brand-name recognition helped secure a new partnership with Royal Bank of Canada, which is sponsoring the new school’s first graduate fellowship program. The investment by RBC will fund two fellowship positions for students specializing in climate change or sustainability-related research and, in doing so, help launch the program.
This isn’t the first time that RBC has partnered with the university. In 2018, RBC and BGU entered into a cybersecurity partnership, in which the bank invested $2 million toward research programs in BGU’s department of software and information systems engineering.
In this case, the partnership aligns with RBC’s own long-term sustainability goals and its Tech for Nature program, which it launched in 2019.
Martin Thibodeau serves as the president of Royal Bank of Canada’s British Columbia region. (photo from Royal Bank of Canada)
“The research being conducted also aligns with RBC’s interests as we recognize that innovative technologies offer immense potential to help solve environmental challenges,” Martin Thibodeau, B.C. regional president, RBC Royal Bank, told the Independent. “The most pressing environmental concerns of our time are negatively impacting the planet at a rate that often outpaces the solutions designed to address them. RBC is leveraging its capabilities in technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain, as well as its convening power, to build solutions and the type of multi-partner coalitions needed to address and solve our shared environmental challenges.
“Our commitments align with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and, through our partnerships, we aim to develop multi-sector, multi-partner solutions to achieve progress on these challenging issues. We’re both proud and excited to partner with BGU through CABGU to address these important issues,” Thibodeau said.
“We are in awe of the grassroots contributions that RBC makes to our Jewish community and the positive role that RBC plays and has played in strengthening so many local community organizations in British Columbia and across Canada,” said David Berson, executive director of the B.C. & Alberta chapter of the Canadian Associates of Ben-Gurion University, which worked as a liaison with RBC and BGU to secure the partnership.
“[We] are incredibly excited that corporations such as RBC see the importance of partnering with Ben-Gurion University, [and] that their investment [will] pay back to society tenfold,” Chamovitz said. He likened RBC’s partnership to an educator who invests in students’ goals, which, in time, benefit generations to come.
A new learning model
Climate change is a multidisciplinary problem, said Chamovitz, one that takes the expertise of not only hydrologists, biologists and engineers, but geneticists, geologists, legal experts and others. Education, therefore, must be tailored to meet the broad range of knowledge required to understand climate change. That doesn’t mean graduate students won’t specialize in their research and their studies, Chamovitz said, but they will be expected to have a multidisciplinary background that connects with the challenges of creating a sustainable world and addressing climate change.
Microbial eco-genomics deals with the study of relationship between organisms, including microbes and their environment. (photo from BGU)
“The one requirement would be their willingness to work interdisciplinarily and to take courses in other fields. Otherwise, they don’t need the school,” said Chamovitz. “They could just go into the school of engineering [for example] or school of ecology. And, you know, for some people, that’s the better track.”
Chamovitz said it’s companies like RBC that are making this new branch of education possible, adding that the university has seen an increase in inquiries from companies and communities across the world that are attempting to address climate change challenges. Last year, for example, a company located in Chennai, India, reached out to see if BGU could assist in building a local agricultural research institute. Chamovitz said the institute’s future researchers will be trained first at BGU before returning home to Chennai to begin their new jobs. The university has also struck up a three-way partnership with the city of Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, and Arizona State University, in Tempe, Ariz., to address issues relating to global warming in Dubai.
“We have similar collaborations in western China, which are also in arid places. And we are really excited about developing relationships in Canada,” said Chamovitz, who recently visited Vancouver to meet the presidents of Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia, which both offer studies in climate change and sustainability.
The two Israeli RBC fellowship students have already been selected. Shir Eisenstein will be doing a master’s in material engineering, looking for new materials that help harness sustainable, renewable energy. Nadina Levitt, who is also pursuing a master’s, will be enrolled in the department of geography and environmental studies and studying sustainability models for smart cities. Both students demonstrated a key requirement for upper-level studies when it comes to BGU’s approach to this new specialization: innovation.
“One of the problems in higher education is this need for prerequisites,” Chamovitz noted. “What we are looking for is not prerequisites, but ingenuity.”
The university is expected to complete the formalization process and approval for the new school of sustainability and climate change in February and be open for enrolment this October.
Jan Lee’s articles, op-eds and blog posts have been published in B’nai B’rith Magazine, Voices of Conservative and Masorti Judaism, Times of Israel and Baltimore Jewish Times, as well as a number of business, environmental and travel publications. Her blog can be found at multiculturaljew.polestarpassages.com.
