Award Winners

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Prof. Uri Banin - Winner of the IVS2017 Excellence Award for Research

Prof. Uri Banin completed his PhD in Physical Chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1994). After postdoctoral appointment at the University of California at Berkeley, he joined the Hebrew University faculty where he is currently a Full Professor. He was the founding director of the Hebrew University Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (2001-2010). He is an Associate Editor of the journal Nano Letters since 2013. In 2009 he founded Qlight Nanotech to develop and commercialize the use of semiconductor nanocrystals and nanorods in display applications.  Qlight was fully acquired by Merck in 2015, and serves in Jerusalem as its global R&D center on quantum materials. His research focuses on science and technology of nanocrystals investigating their synthesis and properties, and developing their applications in displays, optics, energy, electronics, material science and biology. Prof. Banin authored 185 papers which are widely cited and is an inventor of 29 patents in nanotechnology. He has mentored over 50 advanced degree students and postdocs, 10 of which already hold faculty positions in Israel and abroad. His distinctions include the Rothschild and Fulbright postdoctoral fellowships (1994), the Israel Chemical Society prize for a young scientist (2001), the Michael Bruno Memorial Award (2007), the first recipient of the Lea Tenne prize for Nanoscale Science (2013), and the Landau prize in applied nanotechnology (2015). He is a recipient of two European Research Council (ERC) advanced investigator grant (2010-2015; 2017-2022).

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Dr. Yossi Gofer, Winner of the IVS2017 Excellence Award for Surface Science

Dr. Yossi Gofer completed his PhD in Physical Chemistry at the Bar Ilan University (XXXX). He then spent 2 years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Case Western Reserve University, OHIO.  His main focus was studying highly defined lithium and single crystal platinum electrodes with XPS and AES, combined with in-situ or operando electrochemical measurements under UHV conditions. In the next two years he joined Prof. Searson’s group at the Johns Hopkins University, leading the research on electronically conducting polymers electrochemistry. Since his return to Israel (1998-2017) he joined the Bar Ilan University, both as the XPS specialist and the leader of the Magnesium Battery Research Project at Prof. Aurbach’s electrochemistry group. During these years he also spent two years with the IBA team, and was involved in a host of other researches and scientific activities, mainly in the energy and environmental domain. Dr. Gofer authored 105 journal papers and meeting proceedings, and an inventor of 18 international patents. In the last ten years Dr. Gofer serves also as an expert in broad range of chemical analyses, particularly for materials and surface sciences.

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Christine Stollberg, Winner of the IVS2017 Female Scientist Award

Christine Stollberg received the Diploma in Physics (equiv. to M.Sc.) at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Germany, in 2011 with focus on optics. Being very interested in the interaction of high-intensity lasers and matter, especially the acceleration of particles by lasers, she continued as a Ph.D. student in the plasma group of Prof. Yitzhak Maron in the Weizmann Institute of Science. Here she is now investigating a small-scale self-compressing plasma column that has a potential application as wave-guide in laser-particle acceleration experiments. To adjust the plasma channel parameters to the requirements for laser particle acceleration, its implosion dynamics has to be well understood. During her research at the WIS Christine succeeded for the first time to explicitly measure the magnetic field distribution and evolution in a very unfavorable plasma surrounding. This measurement and the subsequent conclusions have the potential to help explaining the underlying basic physical mechanisms that lead to the implosion dynamics in self-compressing plasma devices. Christine ‘s work is thus a basis for a significant contribution to the plasma and vacuum science community.

In her personal life, Christine is a loving wife and mother to a two year old daughter.

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Racheli Ron, Winner of the IVS2017 Female Scientist Award

Racheli Ron is materials engineer with a master’s degree in chemistry from Bar-Ilan University in the group of Dr. Adi Salomon (2014-2016).  During her master studies she beautifully opened a new research area, “Scalable nanoporous metallic networks”, which was published in Advanced Materials. She has successfully managed not only to fabricate and thoroughly characterize these materials, but she also drove it towards applications. 

She is currently engaged in a Ph.D. track in the same group, Salomon group, working on the unique linear and nonlinear optical properties of such metallic networks and their applications. 

Previously, as part of her engineering studies at the Jerusalem College of Engineering, she participated in a research project on medical applications of inorganic fullerene-like nanoparticles at the Weizmann Institute, under the supervision of Prof. Reshef Tenne which lead her to three publications of high international standing.

Although her young research career she has two patents, five publications, and several award prizes.