Tau Unbound | Tel Aviv 360

Prof. Tamar Herzig, Professor of Comparative European History at Tel Aviv University

In this special episode Ido Aharoni engages in a conversation with Prof. Tamar Herzig about the mass rape of women, and the mutilation of their bodies, during the October 7th atrocities. Prof. Herzig describes herself as a feminist historian and is shocked by the silence of some of her academic colleagues globally. She is the Konrad Adenauer Professor of Comparative European History at Tel Aviv University. She currently serves as Vice Dean for Research of the Faculty of Humanities, as Vice Chairperson of the Historical Society of Israel and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Renaissance Society of America. In 2014-2021, she served as Director of Tel Aviv University's Morris E. Curiel Institute for European Studies. Her article “Slavery and Interethnic Sexual Violence: A Multiple Perpetrator Rape in Seventeenth-Century Livorno” (American Historical Review 127:1) won the 2022 Best Article Award of the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender, and was awarded the Mediterranean Seminar’s Article of the Month Award for July 2022. In 2021, she was awarded the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies’ Michael Bruno Memorial Award for groundbreaking research, for her contribution to the study of premodern history and especially of the Italian Renaissance. In 2020 she won the American Historical Association's Rosenberg Prize and later on was awarded Honorable Mention of the Renaissance Society of America's Gordan Book Prize in Renaissance Studies (2021) for her book A Convert’s Tale: Art, Crime, and Jewish Apostasy in Renaissance Italy.
(Harvard University Press, 2019; Hebrew Translation: Magnes Press, 2023; Italian translation; Viella, 2023) . For her work on religious conversion in early modern Italy, she also won the Kadar Award for Outstanding Research in 2019.
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Dr. Harel Chorev, Head of the Doron Halpern Middle East Network Analysis Desk at the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University.Dr. Harel Chorev is the Head of the Doron Halpern Middle East Network Analysis Desk at the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University. Chorev is a historian focusing on informal networks in the Middle East and their analysis with tools combining empirical historical study and Network Theory. In this new episode of TAU Unbound Dr. Chorev is discussing the implications of the October 7th Gaza War on Israel’s ties with the Palestinians, the international community and beyond.

Prof. Dina Porat, professor (emeritus) of Jewish History at Tel Aviv University and chief historian of Yad VashemIn this new episode of TAU Unbound, Ido Aharoni is hosting Prof. Dina Porat, one the world’s leading academics on the issue of Holocaust and Antisemitism.
Dina Porat is a professor (emeritus) of Jewish History at Tel Aviv University and chief historian of Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Memorial Center. In this discussion, Porat is making the distinction between “anti-Zionism” and antisemitism. The historical objections to Zionism, and the weaponization of the term is an element from the playbook of the Soviet Union borrowed by Iran and its proxies.
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Prof. Yair Bar Haim, Head of the National Center for Traumatic Stress and Resilience at Tel Aviv University.
According to health officials, the October 7th War added approx. 30,000 more cases of PTSD. In this new episode of TAU Unbound, Prof. Yair Bar Haim shares his knowledge about what is PTSD, and what are the most effective ways to deal with it. Prof. Bar Haim is the head of the newly established National Center for Traumatic Stress and Resilience at Tel Aviv University.
Trauma is defined as “a disordered psychic or behavioral state resulting from severe mental or emotional stress or physical injury.” Bar Haim: "The Trauma Center is one component of the planned center, which will include a vast clinical research component, a training center, and a policy-making center for traumatic stress and PTSD. One year ago, construction commenced on the Miriam and Moshe Shuster Building for the Center for Traumatic Stress and Resilience, including a treatment clinic, cutting-edge laboratories, and the Sam and Agi Moss Wing, which was slated to open in late 2025.”

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Prof. Uri Ben-David, Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University & Department of Human Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry.

Prof. Uri Ben-David is our guest for this episode of TAU Unbound. He is a professor in the Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University and a researcher in the Department of Human Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry. He obtained his doctorate from the Hebrew University and his post-doctoral work at the Broad Institute of Harvard University and MIT.
His work at the "Ben David Lab” at TAU focuses on a unique, understudied trait of cancer. Changes in the chromosomal composition of the cell, also known as aneuploidy, make for a fundamental difference between normal and cancer cells. The lab combines experimental and computational approaches to uncover the basic biology underlying this hallmark of cancer, track its origins and understand its cellular consequences. By doing so, the lab strives to expand our understanding of the genetic basis of cancer, and to make aneuploidy a therapeutic target for precision cancer medicine.
In this episode Aharoni & Ben David cover the main elements of Ben David’s work:
CANCER ANEUPLOIDY Aneuploidy – the presence of an abnormal number of chromosomes in cancer cells — is characteristic of most tumors, and is rarely observed in normal tissues.
EVOLUTION OF CANCER MODELS The study of the complex genetics of human cancer depends on reliable cancer model systems.
STEM CELLS & CANCER Human stem cells share fundamental characteristics with human cancer cells, and thus make for a unique model system for the study of cancer genetics.

Prof. Eyal Benvenisti, Faculty of Law, Tel-Aviv University

Prof. Eyal Benvenisti, one of Israel’s leading experts in international law and human rights, is our guest in this new episode of TAU Unbound. A son to a well-known Jewish dynasty, Benvenisti was born in Jerusalem and obtained his LL.B from the Hebrew University, LL.M. from Yale University and his doctorate in law (J.S.D.) also from Yale. He is a former Whewell Professor of International Law at Cambridge University and has served as Visiting Professor at several US law schools (Columbia, Harvard, Michigan, NYU, Pennsylvania, Yale). He is also the recipient of the European Research Council Advanced Grant for research on “Sovereigns as Trustees of Humanity: The Obligations of Nations in an Era of Global interdependence" (GlobalTrust) (2013-2018).
In this episode Prof. Benvenisti clarifies the differences between “democracy” and “rule of majority” and explains how international law plays into the domestic challenges Israel in facing post 10/7.
Listen to another episode from the podcast series Tel Aviv 360, Israel's largest and most diverse podcast about research and innovation.
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Professor (Emerita) Illana Gozes is the Director of the Elton Laboratory for Molecular Neuroendocrinology at the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences at TAU

Professor (Emerita) Illana Gozes is the Director of the Elton Laboratory for Molecular Neuroendocrinology at the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences at TAU. Here she discusses with host Ido Aharoni her work, in particular, her scientific breakthroughs spanning decades of cutting edge innovative scientific research. In short, Professor Gozes discovered a new protein to science, she named it activity-dependent neuroprotective protein (ADNP). ADNP is essential for brain formation and when mutated it causes the ADNP syndrome, within the autism spectrum disorders. Furthermore, she discovered that it is mutated in Alzheimer’s disease brains paralleling the progression of disease pathology. With ADNP playing such crucial roles, the Gozes research team derived a small brain protective fragment of it and named this fragment NAP (investigational drug davunetide) toward clinical development. Analyzing clinical trial results, she showed that davunetide protects against brain degeneration in women suffering from the intractable disease, progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), sharing core pathology with Alzheimer’s disease. Davunetide is now in clinical development by Exonavis Therapeutics Ltd (where Prof. Gozes serves as Vice President for Drug Development). Amazingly, she never rests on her laurels. One of her other scientific breakthroughs, stemming from her discovery of ADNP linkage with stress conditions (a risk for Alzheimer’s disease), that in turn is paralleled by changes in the body’s bacterial flora have now progressed to studies on trauma. Thus, in combat shock victims, she and her colleagues identified the presence of certain bacteria in saliva paralleling post-trauma among veterans. The findings of this groundbreaking research point to a typical picture of bacteria in saliva that appears in veterans who suffered from combat reactions, and who now suffer from post-trauma. Together, the results of the studies pave the way for patient stratification, understanding nature versus nurture and the development of personalized sex-dependent therapeutics.
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Prof. Sivan Toledo, head of the Blavatnik School of Computer Science of Tel Aviv University

Prof. Sivan Toledo is an Israeli computer scientist, a professor of computer science at the Blavatnik School of Computer Science of Tel Aviv University and as of October 2020 serves as the head of the School of Computer Science. Born in Tel Aviv, he received a bachelor's degree in mathematics and computer science and a master's degree in computer science from Tel Aviv University, within the interdisciplinary program for outstanding students named after Adi Lautman. In 1995, he received a doctorate in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), for a work entitled "Quantitative Performance Modeling of Scientific Computations and Creating Locality in Numerical Algorithms", which was done under the guidance of Charles E. Leiserson. He did his post-doctorate at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center and at Xerox PARC and in 1998 he joined the academic staff of Tel Aviv University. In the academic years 2007/2008 and 2008/2009 he was a visiting associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In 2001, his book "Operating Systems" was published by Akedmon. In 2020, his book "Location Estimation from the Ground Up" was published by SIAM. In 2023 he was elected a fellow of the professional association SIAM.
In this new episode Sivan is discussing with host Ido Aharoni his research areas: Combinatorial Scientific Computing and Numerical Linear Algebra. Also, the work of the
faculty, its scope and impact.
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Prof. (Emeritus)Manuel Trajtenberg, a visiting senior researcher at INSSProf. (Emeritus) Trajtenberg is currently a visiting senior researcher at INSS. He served as the executive director of INSS between May 2021 and May 2024. Prof. Trajtenberg joined the Eitan Berglas School of Economics at Tel Aviv University in 1984, after obtaining his Ph.D. at Harvard University. He is regarded as one of the world's leading experts in the field of R&D, patents, innovation, and economic growth. He held senior positions in the public sector: founder and first chairman of the National Economic Council at the Prime Minister’s Office (2006-9); chairman of the Budgeting and Planning Committee of the Council for Higher Education (2009-14); chairman of the government Committee for Social and Economic Change (the “Trajtenberg Committee”) following the mass social protests of 2011; and member of Knesset (2015-17). Prof. Trajtenberg subsequently led the “100 days” project at the Samuel Neaman Institute at the Technion, addressing key economic and social issues such as fiscal and tax policies, the transportation crisis, early childhood education, the funding of the health system, and more. He also has much experience with security issues: he served for many years as an expert reservist in Mafat, the Directorate for Defense R&D; initiated and served as key member of the Brodet Committee for the Defense Budget following the Second Lebanon War; was a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of Rafael during the development of the Iron Dome anti-missile system; was a member of the forum that created the National Cyber Directorate; was a member of the Knesset committee for the defense budget; and more.
In this episode he is discussing with our host Ido Aharoni, the lack of vision on the part of Israel’s leadership and the state of affairs in the country.

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Prof. Liad MudrikSchool of Psychological sciencesProf. Liad Mudrik is an alumnus of the interdisciplinary program for outstanding students. She received two PhD degrees, in cognitive neuroscience (TAU & HUJI) and in philosophy (TAU). The latter was awarded with the Robert J. Glushko prize for outstanding dissertations in cognitive science. She then continued to work as a postdoctoral fellow at the division of biology at the California Institute of Technology, and joined the school of psychological sciences as a faculty member in 2015. She is a member of the Israel Young Academy of Sciences. She is from the School of Psychological Sciences and Sagol School of Neuroscience at Tel Aviv University, has two doctorates, both in the field of philosophy and in the field of neuroscience and cognition. She deals with questions of body and mind in an experimental approach, in the study of human cognition in general, and in the study of human consciousness in particular. In this new episode, Liad talks about contemporary models for the mechanisms of consciousness in the brain, and about her part in the world-wide attempt to determine which of these models is more in line with the reality we are aware of. She also talks about her scientific path, about her extensive activity in spreading science to the public, including on the radio, and why it is important not only to her listeners but also to her, and she even touches on the question of whether artificial intelligence systems will even be able to experience the taste of chocolate. Her main focus: where exactly cognition happens? Where consciousness happens? The challenge of developing a theory that explains the brain basis of conscious experience preoccupies several world-renowned researchers, who have devoted a significant part of their careers to it.

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