Four outstanding junior and senior TAU faculty members on campus were presented with the 2020 Kadar Family Award for Outstanding Research at a special online event as part of the 2020 Board of Governors meeting. The winners, Prof. Tal Ellenbogen (Engineering), Prof. Ilit Ferber (Humanities), Prof. Ishay Rosen-Zvi (Humanities) and Prof. Ronit Satchi-Fainaro (Medicine), were selected from multiple candidates who went through a rigorous review process.
Nadav Kadar, TAU alumnus, recently elected member of the TAU Board of Governors and co-founder of the Naomi Foundation, delivered remarks at the virtual event. Also present were Prof. Yoav Henis, outgoing VP for Research and Development and Chairman of the award committee; TAU President Prof. Ariel Porat; and outgoing TAU Rector Prof. Yaron Oz.
“My family joins me in congratulating the 2020 recipients of the award. Thank you for your magnificent contributions in your respective fields,” said Nadav Kadar on behalf of the Kadar family during the ceremony. “Our award honors outstanding research and scholarship in the sciences and the humanities and celebrates the pioneering spirit and hard work necessary to change the world. My mother, Naomi Prawer Kadar, taught Yiddish at schools and institutions of higher learning around the world including the International Yiddish Summer Program at TAU. We are proud to support Tel Aviv University as a hub of innovation.”
Prof. Henis, chair of the event, gave special thanks to the Kadar family for supporting the award for the sixth year in a row. “We truly hope that this important tradition will continue.”
“The Kadar Award has become the most prestigious research award at TAU,” said President Porat at the ceremony. “In order to become prestigious, an award must meet two conditions: candidates must be high quality, and the selection committee members must be distinguished scholars who are able to make judgments outside their field. The committee has done a wonderful job year after year.”
The Kadar Family Award is funded by the Naomi Foundation, which honors the memory of Naomi Prawer Kadar PhD, a lifelong educator and the late wife of physician, educator and innovator Dr. Avraham Kadar, a TAU graduate and benefactor. Naomi and Avraham Kadar’s three children, Nadav Kadar, Einat Kadar Kricheli, and Maya Kadar Kovalsky, are alumni of TAU and active board members of the Foundation alongside their father.
The 2020 Kadar Family Award laureates:
Prof. Tal Ellenbogen is the Head of the Laboratory for Nanoscale Electro-Optics at the School of Electrical Engineering within the Fleischman Faculty of Engineering. He studies light-matter interactions in the atmosphere to develop and improve optical technologies. Ellenbogen strives to influence industry and humanity by improving technologies that are used everywhere; mobile phones, camera lenses, computer screens, car scanners, and more.
Prof. Ilit Ferber is a member of the School of Philosophy, Linguistics and Science Studies at the Entin Faculty of Humanities. Her research examines the relationship between human communication and painful emotions such as melancholy, loss and anxiety. These emotions, generally perceived as negative, can cause language communication to collapse, making it difficult to express pain. Ferber believes, however, that painful emotions can open up a new world of communicating these feelings without words.
Prof. Ishay Rosen-Zvi belongs to the Rosenberg School of Jewish Studies and Archaeology at the Entin Faculty of Humanities. He specializes in Talmudic literature and culture and has researched and written on the Midrash and Mishnah, as well as on issues of self-formation and collective identity in Second-Temple Judaism and rabbinic literature. He is a recipient of the Alon Fellowship and serves as a mentor for numerous master’s and PhD students.
Prof. Ronit Satchi-Fainaro is the Chair of the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine. Her research focuses on the interactions between cancer calls and their microenvironments, including tumor progression and angiogenesis. For the past five years, she has worked on using the immune system to attack cancer cells using nanotechnology. In 2020, her team pivoted their work to find a COVID-19 nano-vaccine, and plan to translate research findings into clinical trials soon. She has published close to 100 scientific articles and registered numerous patents.
