Israeli Women’s Postdoctoral Award
Supporting promising women pursuing research careers in mathematics, computer science, industrial engineering, or electrical engineering in Israel.
Overview
The Eric and Wendy Schmidt Postdoctoral Award for Women in Mathematical and Computing Sciences (“Israeli Women’s Postdoctoral Award”) supports promising women in Israel who wish to pursue a postdoctoral fellowship in mathematics, computer science, industrial engineering, or electrical engineering at a major institution outside of Israel.
The ultimate goal of the Israeli Women’s Postdoctoral Award is to increase the number of women faculty members in the fields of mathematics, computer science, industrial engineering, or electrical engineering positioned at Israeli research universities. To achieve this goal, the award provides important opportunities for Israeli women to gain research experience abroad. Gaining such experience will provide exposure to broader trends in a researcher’s field, increase visibility and participation in professional networks, and establish a position in the global field, which will be key to helping the recipient secure a tenure track position in academia upon her return to Israel.
More than 60 women have been named Israeli Women’s Postdoctoral Laureates since the inception of the program in 2016.
Awardees have held postdoctoral positions at a variety of institutions, including:
• École Normale Supérieure
• ETH Zurich
• Harvard University
• Princeton University
• Stanford University
• University of Oxford
More than 20 women are now faculty at Israeli universities.
This award is made possible through funding from The Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fund for Strategic Innovation.
How to Apply
Applications for the 2024 Cohort will open in late spring 2024. Questions about the program may be directed to israelpostdoc@schmidtsciences.org.
Eligibility & Program Details
Applicants should be women who plan to complete their PhDs at an Israeli University the subsequent year and would like to apply for a postdoctoral fellowship abroad for the following year. Applicants’ research must be in the areas of mathematics, computer science, industrial engineering, or electrical engineering. The fellowship is expected to start within a year of the award announcement, with a possibility of being awarded another grant of the same amount for a second year based on research progress and Program guidelines.
Each award recipient will receive a grant of $60,000 upon beginning a postdoctoral or early career research fellowship in her discipline at and has relocated to a major institution outside of Israel. The award will only be made to women who accept an offer of a fellowship in her discipline outside of Israel within a year of the award announcement. Awards will then be paid at the start of their stay abroad. This award is intended as an income supplement (and not a replacement of the hosting institution stipend/salary) that should enable recipients to pursue and focus on their research while maintaining other obligations.
Our Impact
Selection
Recipients of the award will be announced in the fall of each year, in time to permit them to apply for appropriate fellowships abroad and reference the award on their applications.
Approximately 10 women per year will be competitively selected for this award. An international committee of distinguished researchers assists in evaluating the applications and identifying the award recipients. The Selection Committee considers all applications and recommends a list of award recipients. The final decision is made by Schmidt Sciences and Eric and Wendy Schmidt.
The current Selection Committee is composed of the distinguished researchers below:
• Noga Alon, Princeton University
• Shiri Artstein-Avidan, Tel Aviv University
• Hagit Attiya, Technion
• Ron Brachman, Cornell Tech
• Michael Elhadad, Ben Gurion University
• Michal Feldman, Tel Aviv University
• Stuart Feldman, Schmidt Sciences
• Yoelle Maarek, Amazon Research
• Jennifer Rexford, Princeton University
• Lihi Zelnik-Manor, Technion
Featured Awardees
Mor Nitzan, 2016 Awardee
Dr. Mor Nitzan is a Senior Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with joint affiliations at the School of Computer Science and Engineering, Racah Institute of Physics, and Faculty of Medicine. Previously, she was a John Harvard Distinguished Science Fellow and James S. McDonnell Fellow at Harvard University. Mor obtained a BSc in Physics and a PhD in Physics and Computational Biology at the Hebrew University as an Azrieli Sciences Fellow. Mor is the recipient of the Azrieli Early Career Faculty Fellowship, Alon Fellowship, Google Research Scholar Award, Prime Minister’s Researcher Recruitment Award, Eric and Wendy Schmidt Postdoctoral Award for Women in Mathematical and Computing Sciences, and Vatat Postdoctoral Fellowship. Mor’s research is at the interface of Computer Science, Physics, and Biology, focusing on the representation, inference and design of multicellular systems. Her work is supported by an ERC Starting Grant, ISF Research and Equipment Grants, and CHE Data Science Grant.
Reuth Mirsky, 2017 Awardee
Reuth Mirsky is a Senior Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at the Computer Science Department in Bar Ilan University and is the head of the Goal-optimization using Learning and Decision-making (GOLD) lab. She received her PhD in 2019 from Ben-Gurion University, and was a postdoc at the University of Texas until 2022. In her research, Reuth is interested in the similarities and the differences between AI and natural intelligence, and how these can be used to extend AI agents and robots to be better collaborators for humans. To accomplish this goal, Reuth utilizes techniques for Multi-agent systems, Reinforcement Learning, and HRI research. Reuth is an active member in the AI and HRI research communities, and was selected as one of the 2020 Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) Rising Stars.
Sivan Trajtenberg Mills, 2018 Awardee
| Sivan Trajtenberg Mills is an electrical engineering postdoc at MIT. She received her BsC in Physics and Computer science from Tel Aviv University (TAU). She holds a PhD in Physics from TAU in the field of nonlinear optics, supervised by Professor Ady Arie. In her postdoctoral research, Sivan develops devices that can control the phase and amplitude of light at very high speeds (GHz). The growing interest in developing such a device is driven by several applications: quantum computing, where atom or ion qubit implementations require addressing qubits at timescales shorter than their decoherence time; imaging through scattering media, where GHz speed modulation can allow non-invasive in vivo imaging; and LiDAR applications that require very high-speed scanning of an input source. |
Rotem Dror, 2019 Awardee
Dr. Rotem Dror is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania Cognitive Computation Group, mentored by Prof. Dan Roth. She received her Ph.D. from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, where she was advised by Prof. Roi Reichart. With a focus on Natural Language Processing applications, her research involves developing statistically sound methodologies for empirical investigation and evaluation. As part of her research, she is also looking into ways to leverage the statistical properties of language to generate text that is useful for NLP applications such as event processing, fact validation, and summarization.
Shirly Geffen, 2020 Awardee
Shirly Geffen is a Junior Professor at the WWU Münster. She earned her PhD in mathematics through a joint program between Ben-Gurion University in Israel and WWU Münster in Germany. Following the completion of her PhD, she started a postdoctoral position at the KU Leuven in Belgium. After one year in Belgium, Shirly was accepted into her current role at the WWU Münster. Shirly works in Operator Algebras and is interested in the connections between the properties of the dynamical system and its attached C-algebra.
Michal Friedman, 2021 Awardee
| Michal Friedman is a postdoctoral researcher at the Systems Group of ETH, working with Prof. Gustavo Alonso. Her research interests are broad and include systems, concurrent computing, and programming languages. She focuses on understanding the factors affecting different hardware components and developing optimized solutions that take these factors into account. In particular, she is interested in designing general solutions for running concurrent programs on emerging hardware platforms. She obtained a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the Technion, advised by Prof. Erez Petrank, and was generously supported by the Azrieli Foundation Fellowship. In her Ph.D. thesis, she focused on developing concurrent data structures for non-volatile memories. She completed her BSc summa cum laude at the Computer Science Department at the Technion. |
Award Recipients
- Adi Glücksam
- Adi Hanuka
- Batya Kenig
- Brit Youngmann
- Clara Shikhelman
- Ella Rabinovich
- Esty Kelman
- Gail Weiss
- Gali Noti
- Gal Kronenberg
- Gil Goffer
- Hadar Elor
- Hila Gonen
- Lee Cohen
- Liat Cohen
- Liat Peterfreund
- Liron Cohen
- Michal Friedman
- Michal Yemini
- Mira Shalah
- Mor Geva
- Mor Nitzan
- Mor Weiss
- Mor Vered
- Nattalie Tamam
- Noa Zychlinski
- Nofar Carmeli
- Nofar Hemed
- Omrit Filtser
- Rachel Greenfeld
- Rana Shahout
- Reuth Mirsky
- Rotem Dror
- Sarah Keren
- Shir Cohen
- Shir Landau Feibish
- Shira Golovin
- Shirly Geffen
- Sivan Trajtenberg Mills
- Tal Shnitzer
- Talya Eden
- Tamar Bar-On
- Tamar Rott Shaham
- Valentina Pyatkin
- Vered Shwartz
