Female Deans Making History at the Technion

Professor Ayelet Fishman, dean of students, is head of the Laboratory of Molecular and Applied Biocatalysis in the Technion Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering. As dean of students, she oversees the well-being and personal advancement of all Technion students. Prof. Fishman has conducted extensive research on protein alternatives that do not rely on animal sources. For example, she developed a vegan gel that can be used to create chocolate pudding that has the same texture as milk-based pudding and is healthier than existing soy puddings.

Professor Gitti Frey, dean of the Faculty of Material Sciences and Engineering, has been with the Faculty of Material Sciences and Engineering since 2002 and is affiliated with the Grand Technion Energy Program. In her research, Prof. Frey studies how to assemble organic and inorganic materials into optoelectronically functional systems that are integrated into products such as LEDs or solar cells. She has been internationally recognized for her research work and has been lauded numerous times by the Technion for excellence in teaching and research.

Professor Idit Keidar, dean of the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, studies computer engineering with a focus on distributed systems such as cloud storage, where files of millions of users are stored in a network of tens of thousands of machines. She has collaborated with industrial partners (including IBM, Microsoft, Yahoo, and VAST Data) on designing and building distributed systems. Yet she is particularly keen on understanding the theoretical foundations that can improve the practice. Prof. Keidar is also an accomplished prose writer whose short story recently won second place in a creative writing contest for scientists.

Professor Marcelle Machluf, dean of the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering*, has received international accolades for her cutting-edge cancer and drug delivery research. She was named Lady Globes’ “Woman of the Year” in 2018, and her work has been included in the Israel Ministry of Science and Technology’s list of “Israel’s 60 Most Impactful Developments.” She is perhaps best known for her work in tissue regeneration as well as her targeted drug delivery system called Nano-Ghosts, which uses stem cells to home in on tumors, unleashing their therapeutic load at the cancer site.

Professor Stavit Alon-Shalev, dean of Continuing Education and External Studies, is a professor in the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and the director of the Genetic Institute of Emek Medical Centre in Afula, Israel. Prof. Alon-Shalev focuses on using nanotechnology to decipher the genetic bases of inherited diseases. She has served on numerous national committees guiding the use of medical genetics in Israel, including the Committee for Rare Diseases of the Ministry of Health.

Professor Tali Tal, dean of the Faculty of Education in Science and Technology, leads the faculty’s science and environmental education research group. Her research focuses on learning science in informal settings, inquiry-based learning, environmental education, and learning with socioscientific issues. Prof. Tal served as the president of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, and was the chair of the Ministry of Education Professional Committee of Environmental Sciences.

Professor Yael Mandel-Gutfreund, dean of the Faculty of Biology, is the past president of the Israeli Society for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology and an internationally celebrated expert in systems biology. Prof. Mandel-Gutfreund studies DNA and RNA binding proteins, which has led to the development of novel drug targets. She has also studied how viral infections can impact gene expression in placental and embryonic cells to understand how these infections can impact pregnancy.