Israeli Scientists Awarded $100,000 For Groundbreaking Research

Three young Israeli scientists have been awarded $100,000 each for their groundbreaking research. 

Since 2017, the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in Israel has recognized the country’s most promising researchers in life sciences, physical sciences & engineering, and chemistry, and each year, one scientist in each category receives $100,000 to pursue their research. The prizes are awarded to scientists aged up to 42.

The awards were established by the Blavatnik Family Foundation, which supports educational, scientific, cultural, and charitable institutions around the world. Over the past decade, it has contributed more than $1 billion to over 250 organizations.

This year’s laureates are:

Shai Carmi, PhD (life sciences) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who developed affordable and accurate methods to genetically test IVF (in vitro fertilization) embryos, or eggs that are fertilized outside of the human body. The technique may be able to screen embryos for severe childhood diseases, and ‘adult’ diseases like heart attack, cancers, schizophrenia, and Crohn’s disease;

Rina Rosenzweig, PhD (chemistry) from the Weizmann Institute of Science, who is discovering how specific proteins (known as chaperones) prevent and reverse the clumping and ‘misfolding’ of other proteins, which can lead to severe neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s diseases. 

By better understanding the chaperones’ functions, effective treatments for these disorders may be developed; and

Zvika Barkerski, PhD (physical sciences & engineering) from the Weizmann Institute of Science, who developed the first efficient encryption algorithm that allows cloud computers to perform computations on encrypted data without the need to first decrypt them.

His algorithm has enormous potential to improve the security of cloud computing. In addition, he has also developed new cryptography algorithms to verify the output of quantum computations.

“Israel’s science and technology improves lives and constantly expands the boundaries of discovery,” said Len Blavatnik, head of the Blavatnik Family Foundation. “We are proud to honor these exceptional young scientists and their significant contributions to the global scientific community.”