Speakers

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​Sylvan Adams, a Canadian-born businessman, philanthropist and amateur cycling champion, made Aliyah in 2016. He previously served as CEO of the Montreal-based real estate firm Iberville Developments, and was the sole shareholder of Summit International Bank. Upon immigrating to Israel, Adams quickly integrated and devoted himself to serving his country; his calling card reads: "Self-appointed Ambassador at large for the State of Israel." Adams supports an array of causes, most notably in education, health sciences, Jewish continuity, and sport, continuing the philanthropic legacy of his parents, Marcel and Annie, and the family tradition to make a positive contribution to society. Adams holds an MBA from the University of Toronto. He is a Governor and Vice-Chair of Tel Aviv University’s Board of Governors, and a member of the cabinet of TAU’s Global Campaign. Adams is also the only Israeli member of the Giving Pledge, the organization created by Warren Buffett together with Bill and Melinda Gates for wealthy people committed to giving away the majority of their wealth to philanthropic pursuits.

Prof. Dan Amiram is the vice dean and a professor of business at the Coller School of Management at Tel Aviv University. He also serves as the head of the Hogeg Blockchain Research Institute and the head of the Fintech concentration in the MBA program. Before joining the Coller School, he was the Philip H. Geier Associate Professor of Business at Columbia Business School. Professor Amiram’s research focuses on the effects and consequences of frictions created by information asymmetry, taxation and business law on debt and equity markets around the world. He has conducted research in the areas of debt contracting, executive compensation,  banking, international taxation, foreign investments, financial distress and financial reporting fraud and misconduct that was published in top finance and accounting journals. Professor Amiram’s research provides evidence that information, taxation and business law play a significant role in investors' decision-making processes and shape the design of contracts and the financial system.

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Professor Amiram has received awards for both research and teaching. He is frequently asked by governmental organizations, corporations, financial institutions and the media (including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and Forbes) to advise as an expert on various issues.

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Professor Amiram has vast experience in the corporate world. He served and currently serves on the board of directors, including as chairman of the audit committee, of various public and private corporations and financial institutions. He also serves as the chairman of the United Nations Internal Controls Advisory Committee. He worked as part of the controller’s team for a multinational corporation, and for PwC as a senior auditor.

Professor Amiram holds undergraduate degree in accounting and economics, masters in economics from Ben-Gurion University and a PhD in Business from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

Dr. Ayala Arad joined the Coller School of Management at Tel Aviv University in 2013, after two years of post-doctoral studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She received her BSc in mathematics and economics, MA in economics and PhD in economics all at Tel Aviv University.

Ayala’s research area is behavioral economics, which lies on the border between psychology and economics. Her work involves experimental studies of the psychological aspects of decision-making, with the goal of identifying systematic deviations from the classic choice models and inspiring more realistic models of behavior. She investigates individual decision-making processes and reasoning in competitive interactions, in an attempt to shed light on fundamental economic and managerial questions. Ayala received a number of prizes for excellence and several research grants to support her research.

Prof. Uri Ashery is the head of TAU’s Sagol School of Neuroscience and one of the chief initiators of the Sagol School of Neuroscience.  His current research focuses on the molecular mechanisms of neurotransmitter release under normal conditions and in the case of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease. His lab combines multidisciplinary approaches such as electrophysiology, super resolution and TIRF microscopy, molecular and cellular neurobiology and computer modeling to study synaptic plasticity and correlate between molecular changes and synaptic function and dysfunction. Prof. Ashery served as a membrane biophysics researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, Germany, where he completed his post-doctoral studies in 2001 before returning to Israel as a lecturer at TAU in neurobiology. He was a Dan David Prize Scholarship Recipient in 2002.  He has been published in an array of scientific journals including the Journal of Neuroscience, Neuron and Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Educated at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Ashery received his BSc in 1990 in biology and chemistry with distinction, and his PhD in 1996 in neurobiology cum laude.

Professor Karen B. Avraham is vice dean at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine and holds the Drs. Sarah and Felix Dumont Chair for Research of Hearing Disorders. She completed a BA in biology at Washington University in St. Louis, a PhD in genetics at the Weizmann Institute, and post-doctoral training at the National Cancer Institute. She joined the Department of Human Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry in 1996 and is a member of the Sagol School of Neuroscience and Safra Center for Bioinformatics.

Prof. Avraham leads the effort in the discovery of deafness genes and epigenetics of the auditory system, with an emphasis on precision medicine. She has over 150 publications in international journals and has mentored 100 undergraduate, MSc, PhD, and MD-PhD students. Avraham was awarded the Sir Bernard Katz Prize (Humboldt Foundation, Germany), the Bruno Memorial Prize (Rothschild Foundation), the TEVA Prize for Groundbreaking Research in Rare Diseases, and the Teva Founders Prize on Breakthroughs. She is co-director of the Aufzien Family Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Parkinson’s Disease.  

Prof. Abdussalam Azem is Dean of the George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences of Tel Aviv University and head of the Azem Laboratory in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, where he and his staff investigate the molecular function of chaperones, mitochondrial protein import machinery, and genetic diseases.

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Previously, Prof. Azem was a lecturer in the Department of Biochemistry (1997-2003), Senior Lecturer (2003-2009) and Associate Professor (2009-2018) at Tel Aviv University.

Prof. Azem received his BSc in biology from Ben-Gurion University, and completed his MSc and PhD degrees in biochemistry, both from Tel Aviv University. He was a post-doctoral associate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he researched “Structure-function analysis of the GroEL-GroES chaperonin hetero-oligomers,” as well as a post-doctoral associate at the Biozentrum; University of Basel, in Basel, Switzerland, where the subject of their research was, “The protein import machinery of the mitochondria.”

Prof. Daphne Barak-Erez recently left the Buchmann Faculty of Law after being appointed to the Supreme Court of Israel. She was the Stewart and Judy Colton Professor of Law and held the chair of law and security. She is a member of the American Law Institute and a member of the International Academy of Comparative Law. Her main research and teaching areas are administrative and constitutional law. In addition, she teaches courses in the areas of feminist jurisprudence, contracts and payment systems. She is a three time graduate of Tel Aviv University: LLB (summa cum laude) 1988; LLM (summa cum laude) 1991, and JSD, 1993 (recipient of the Colton Fellowship). She was a visiting researcher at Harvard Law School, a visiting fellow at the Max-Planck Institute of Public Law, Heidelberg, an honorary research fellow at University College London, a visiting researcher at the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law in  Lausanne, a visiting researcher at the Jawarlal Nehru University in Delhi and a visiting fellow at the Schell Center at Yale Law School. She has also taught as visiting professor at various universities, including the University of Toronto, Columbia Law School and Stanford Law School. In the past, she acted as the Director of the Minerva Center for Human Rights (2000-2001), the chairperson of the Israeli Association of Public Law, the vice dean of the faculty (2000-2002), the director of the Cegla Center for Interdisciplinary Research of  the Law (2009-2011), a member of the Council of Higher Education in Israel (2007-2011), the president of the Israeli Law and Society Association (2010-2011) and the dean of the faculty (2011-2012). She was awarded several prizes, including the Rector’s Prize for Excellence in Teaching (three times), the Zeltner Prize, the Heshin Prize, the Woman of the City Award (by the City of Tel-Aviv) and the Women in Law Award (by the Israeli Bar). She is the author and editor of several books and of many articles in Israel, England, Canada and the United States.

Yariv Bash is one of three founders of Space IL. He is also a TAU electrical & electronic engineering alumnus, and CEO and co-founder of Flytrex Aviation, which provides autonomous drone delivery solutions. 

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SpaceIL is a non-profit organization established in 2011 with the dual aim of landing the first Israeli spacecraft on the Moon and inspiring new generations to study science and technology fields. The $100 million project was co-founded by Yariv Bash, together with two other young engineers, in response to the Google Lunar XPRIZE challenge and made possible by several private donors. Although the competition officially ended with no winners in 2018, SpaceIL’s launch of ‘Beresheet’ took place in February 2019. While unsuccessful in its Moon landing, Beresheet made Israel the seventh country to orbit the Moon and is the first privately funded spacecraft to achieve this milestone. Work is now underway on Beresheet 2.

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Andrew Cohen is the executive chairman of J.P. Morgan Global Wealth Management. He oversees J.P. Morgan Private Bank’s Institutional Wealth Management practice and leads the partnership between the firm’s investment bank and private bank. In this role, Mr. Cohen focuses on servicing the private bank’s largest and most sophisticated clients globally across Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Latin America, and the United States. He is a member of the Asset & Wealth Management Operating Committee and the Wealth Management Operating Committee.

Prior to this role, Mr. Cohen was the chief executive officer for J.P. Morgan’s International Private Bank, which represents businesses and operations in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Latin America. Before relocating to Hong Kong in 2010 as the chief executive officer for the Asia Private Bank, he was head of Southern California region, based in Los Angeles and, previously, he also worked with ultra-high-net-worth families in Northern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean region.

Mr. Cohen holds a Bachelor of Economics degree from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia and attended the Executive Program of Global Leadership and Public Policy for the 21st Century at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government
Mr. Cohen sits on the Board of Directors of the Serpentine Galleries, the Board of Governors of Tel Aviv University, and is an alumni of the Young Global Leaders Forum (World Economic Forum) and the Hong Kong Forum. In his spare time, he enjoys skiing, sailing, philanthropy and traveling.

Daniel Cohen-Or is a professor in the Blavatnik School of Computer Science. He received his B.Sc. cum laude in both mathematics and computer science (1985), M.Sc. cum laude in computer science (1986) from Ben-Gurion University, and Ph.D. from the Department of Computer Science (1991) at State University of New York at Stony Brook. He received the 2005 Eurographics Outstanding Technical Contributions Award. He sat on the editorial boards of a number of international journals, and has been a member of many of the program committees of several international conferences. He was the recipient of the Eurographics Outstanding Technical Contributions Award in 2005, ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award in 2018.

In 2013 Prof. Cohen-Or received The People’s Republic of China Friendship Award. In 2015 he was named a Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher. His research interests are in computer graphics, in particular, synthesis, processing and modeling techniques. 

Kfir Damari is one of three founders of SpaceIL. An entrepreneur, engineer, researcher and lecturer, Damari wrote his first computer virus at age 11. He is a communication systems engineering graduate of Ben Gurion University, and is co-founder of Tabookey, a cyber security startup.

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SpaceIL is a non-profit organization established in 2011 with the dual aim of landing the first Israeli spacecraft on the Moon and inspiring new generations to study science and technology fields. The $100 million project was co-founded by Damari, together with two other young engineers, in response to the Google Lunar XPRIZE challenge and made possible by several private donors. Although the competition officially ended with no winners in 2018, SpaceIL’s launch of ‘Beresheet’ took place in February 2019. While unsuccessful in its Moon landing, Beresheet made Israel the seventh country to orbit the Moon and is the first privately funded spacecraft to achieve this milestone. Work is now underway on Beresheet 2.

Prof. Nachum Dershowitz is Professor of Computational Logic at Tel Aviv University. He is an international authority on computer reasoning and has made major contributions to the analysis of historical manuscripts and to calendar algorithms. He has authored or coauthored more than 100 research papers and several books, held visiting positions at prominent institutions around the globe, and won numerous awards for research and teaching, including the Herbrand Award for Distinguished Contributions to Automated Reasoning.

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His graduate degrees in applied mathematics are from the Weizmann Institute in Israel, and he was on the faculty of the University of Illinois from 1978 until 1998. He was elected to Academia Europaea in 2013.

Stuart Feldman is Chief Scientist of Schmidt Futures where he is responsible for the Scientific Knowledge programs, including creating fellowship programs, supporting nascent innovative research projects, and driving new platforms and larger research projects that aim to change the way scientific research is done.

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Stuart did his academic work in astrophysics and mathematics and earned his AB at Princeton and his PhD at MIT. Stuart is best known for writing “Make” and other essential tools. He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Mathematics by the University of Waterloo. He is former President of ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) and former member of the board of directors of the AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business). He received the 2003 ACM Software System Award. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, ACM, and AAAS. He is Board Chair of the Center for the Minorities and Disabled in IT, serves on a number of university advisory boards and National Academy panels, and has served on a wide variety of government advisory committees.

Dr. Kathy Fields is a Stanford-trained, board certified dermatologist who has been in private practice in San Francisco since 1987. She is an Adjunct Assistant Clinical Professor of Dermatology at Stanford and an Assistant Clinical Professor Emeritus of Dermatology at UCSF.

Dr. Kathy Fields and Dr. Katie Rodan co-founded Proactiv Solution in 1995, a paradigm shift in the treatment of acne, helping millions of patients world wide. The doctors are also the co-founders of Rodan and Fields, the number one premium skincare brand in North America, focused on life-changing skincare available through a new platform of Consumer Connected Commerce. The doctors have co-authored two books, Unblemished and Write Your Skin a Prescription for Change.

Ms. Christiana Figueres is an internationally recognized leader on global climate change. She is a founding partner of Global Optimism, a purpose-driven enterprise, focused on social and environmental change.

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Ms. Figueres was executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 2010-2016. Throughout her tenure, she brought together national and subnational governments, corporations and activists, financial institutions and communities of faith, think tanks and technology providers, NGOs and parliamentarians, to jointly deliver the unprecedented climate change agreement. The exceptional merit of the Paris Agreement in the world’s efforts to combat climate change, lies in the universal international unanimity, in which 195 nations adopted the agreement, aiming to keep the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 °C.

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Figueres has a long trajectory in the field of global climate change, having been a member of the Costa Rican negotiating team, and having played a number of key roles in the governance of the UNFCCC before formally joining the Secretariat.

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She initiated her life of public service as minister counselor at the Embassy of Costa Rica in Bonn, Germany, was director of Renewable Energy in the Americas (REIA) and founded the non-profit, Center for Sustainable Development of the Americas (CSDA).

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Among her many awards and honors, the Great Cross of the Order of Merit of Germany (1985), Legion of Honor of France (2015), National Guayacan Medal of Costa Rica (2015), Solar Champion Award (2016), British Renewable Energy Judges Award (2016), Manuel de Maria Peralta Prize International Law (2017), CARE Millennium Award (2017), and Distinguished Leadership Award BCSE (2017). Honorary doctorate degrees from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, Concordia University, and Georgetown University.

Prof. Jacob A. Frenkel is Chairman of JPMorgan Chase International and a member of the J.P. Morgan International Council. He also serves as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Group of Thirty (G-30) and Chairman of the Board of Governors of Tel Aviv University. Between 1991 and 2000 he served two terms as the Governor of the Bank of Israel.
 
He is credited with reducing inflation in Israel and achieving price stability, liberalizing Israel’s financial markets, removing foreign exchange controls, and integrating the Israeli economy into the global financial system. Between 1987 and 1991, he was the Economic Counselor and Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund, and between 1973 and 1987 he was on the faculty of the University of Chicago where he held the position of the David Rockefeller Professor of International Economics.
 
Prof. Frenkel is a Laureate of the 2002 Israel Prize in Economics, a recipient of the Scopus Award from the Hebrew University, the Hugo Ramniceanu Prize for Economics from Tel Aviv University, the Czech Republic’s Karel Englis Prize in Economics, the “Order de Mayo al Merito” (in the rank of Gran Cruz) decoration from the Government of Argentina, the “Order of Merit” (in the rank of Cavaliere di Gran Croce) decoration from the Republic of Italy, and the YIVO Lifetime Achievement Award. He is also a recipient of several honorary doctoral degrees and other decorations and awards, including the “1993 Economic Policy Award” by “Emerging Markets” and the “1997 Central Banker of the Year Award” by “Euromoney”.

​Dr. Ofer Gazit is a lecturer in Ethnomusicology at the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music at Tel Aviv University, Israel. He completed his PhD at U.C. Berkeley in 2016, and subsequently taught at the New School for Social Research, the City University of New York before arriving to TAU. Dr. Gazit writes about transnational migration from a musical perspective, focusing particularly on jazz in Israel and the United States. His most recent article has been published in Jazz Perspective, and he is currently preparing book manuscript comparing the influence of migration on the New York jazz scene in the 1920s, 1960s, and 2000s.

Eli Gelman has been serving as chairman of Tel Aviv University's executive council since December 27, 2018. Prior to that he served as president and chief executive officer of Amdocs Management Limited (a software company of 25,000 employees leading the customer experience domain of the communication and media space).  

Mr. Gelman's career at Amdocs spanned more than 30 years, including operations, software development and sales alongside strategy and corporate development.  Mr. Gelman has been a member of Amdocs Board of Directors since 2002, and was also a board member and chairman of Retalix, a provider of software solutions to retailers and distributors worldwide.

Mr. Gelman holds a BSc in electronic engineering with a specialization in communication and computers from the Technion — Israel Institute of Technology. His 5 years of service in the Israel Defense Forces included a leadership role in developing frequency-hopping encrypted communication gear during the 1980's which is still in use today.  

In his charitable work, Mr. Gelman has devoted significant personal time to youth education.

Eric J. Gertler currently serves as co-chairman of U.S. News & World Report, a leading news authority on rankings and expert guidance on life decisions; CEO of Ulysses Ventures, a multi-strategy investment fund that invests in both early and growth stage companies; and as a Trustee to the Zuckerman Institute and Family Office. 

Eric formerly served as co-chairman and co-publisher of the New York Daily News. Under Eric’s leadership, the New York Daily News was honored with a Pulitzer Prize, in the category of public service journalism in 2017.

Prior to these roles, Eric served as executive vice president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) and as managing director of the Center for Economic Transformation. In this role, he was responsible for spurring economic development.

Prior to his government service, Eric successfully led several technology and media companies including as CEO of Altruik (product search optimization), PrimeAxis Media (content aggregation/consumer rankings), and Privista (identity theft protection). In media, Eric served concurrently as the president of the three magazines U.S. News & World Report, Fast Company, and The Atlantic.

He is also the author of the critically acclaimed book Prying Eyes: Protect Your Privacy from People Who Sell to You, Snoop on You or Steal from You. He began his career as an attorney with Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom.

Eric was honored in 2017 as a Great Immigrant by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which recognizes the extraordinary contributions of naturalized citizens through its annual Great Immigrants tribute.  Eric was also named to City & State Magazine’s “The 2016 Responsible 100 List” honoring corporate social responsibility in New York City.

Eric has been actively involved with many non-profit organizations, including as a founding board member of City Year New York. He is a member of Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) and served as past Chair of the New York Metro chapter.