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Gender and an Academic Career in Israel
Good morning, my name is Yael Hanin. I am from the Young Academy.
This is the first official event of the Young Academy,
and we are very happy, and we are very excited, and we are very grateful to everyone (male) and everyone (female) who came here,
and I would like to call on Prof. Ruth Arnon, the President of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities (IASH), to open [the event].
Good morning. I am very pleased to be opening this event, for two reasons.
The first reason is that this is the first event being held by the Young Academy.
The Young Academy is a young organization, which was established only about a year ago, by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities (IASH),
and this was really for the purpose of stimulating and encouraging the participation of a younger generation.
As we know, in the IASH, and this is not unique to our national academy, but also is the case in other countries,
the average age of the members of the academy is not young, if we are to use a delicate term.
It is therefore very important that there be an organization of young people,
who are very active in the academic system, and who will encourage
the whole system to work and to have an influence.
It is therefore very important work.
The second reason is that this event is dedicated to the topic of gender and increasing equality, or I would say, not equality
but equal opportunites for women in the academic sector.
We all know about what is known as the scissor effect, in which students, and even post graduate students,
the percentage of women is at least equal to the percentage of men, and even greater than fifty percent,
and then, the more they advance to higher levels,
the percentage of women in academia decreases.
We have great hope that through the work done by an organization such as the Young Academy,
which is going to forge - you are indeed the generation of the future -
that the Young Academy will also have an infuence in this direction, and, therefore, your conference today here is very important,
and I am very pleased that the conference is being held within the halls of the Academy,
and I wish you a successful meeting, and I am very sorry I will not be able to take part in all the discussions,
simply because I have so many meetings today, and I have to leave.
So, have a successful conference, and the main thing is that you should make an impact.
Our second speaker, Dr. Avital Stein, Director-General of the CHE and the PBS,
and, by the way, I think we are at a very special point in time,
since the President of the the Academy is a woman, and the Director-General of the CHE and the PBS is a woman,
so, perhaps life is much better than one might imagine. So, if you please,
Thank you very much. I would like to make just one remark about this matter.
About three and a half years ago, when I was appointed to be Vice President and Director-General of the Technion,
the announcement that was made said that for the past 85 years -
that for the first time in 85 years,
the Technion had appointed a woman, not only as Director-General, that goes without saying,
but in the administration at all, which is the President and all the deputies.
There had never been a woman in the Technion administration
and I cannot speak for others, so I will not speak about it at length,
but it is very true, and it is not that simple.
So, Prof. Ruth Arnon, President of the IASH,
Dr. Tamar Herzig, member of the Young Academy,
members of the Young Academy - I see mostly ladies here -
ladies and gentlemen, I would like to begin by thanking the Young Academy
for organizing this important event today, and to you, Ruti,
your participation here, even though you said you will not be able to remain,
adds great prestige to the event and attests both to the importance
of the issue, and to the importance of the Young Academy.
Ann Richards, who was the Governor of Texas, and was one of the most accomplished women in the political history of the United States,
used to quote - because I checked it - it wasn't something she herself said but something that was first said - no more and no less -
in comics, in 1984, that everything Fred Astaire was doing,
Ginger Rogers did, except in reverse, and on high heels.
So, unfortunately, this line is a bit true, in general, in the academic world, in the world of politics and business, maybe in many other fields.
Our job, no less than those who demand equality, and I am correcting myself - equal opportunity,
is to break these barriers, because in a place where there is inequality,
the first to be harmed are freedom of thought, curiosity and creativity.
In 2011, a committee was formed by the CHE on the issue of the promotion of women in academia.
Chairing the committee was Prof. Rivka Carmi, President of Ben-Gurion University,
and, along with her, Prof. Dafna Barak-Erez, and others. I promise to be brief.
That committee portrayed the situation as a major improvement, and I would like to reinforce what Ruth said,
and say, that while the proportion of women who complete a post-graduate degree is over 50%,
the proportion of women on the academic faculty, with professorships, is about 15 or, more precisely, 14.8 percent.
The impression of the committee was that women had to contend with singular problems, at the stage of military service, and at the initial stages of advancement,
because of the need to balance family and career - I don't have to tell you about it.
In the near future, we will be conducting a discussion, profound and recommended, and you can trust me,
but we already have indeed initiated a new project
of grants for female post-doctoral students. The announcement will be made at the institutions shortly, within two or three weeks,
just for post-doctorate women students, so that my own personal frustration should be resolved once and for all,
since, when I was growing up in academia - and one cannot use it as an excuse for my not having gone abroad for my post-octorate, but it was one of my reasons for quitting.
It's not unfortunate now, because, you know, careers are careers. Nevertheless, I did go through it.
By the way, for the last 13 years - another statistic -
the percentage of women in the field of mathematics, statistics, the physical sciences and computer sciences,
is static at about 30%, and again, I am talking about bachelors degrees and masters degrees -
as for doctorates, as I mentioned before, there has been a slight change.
Okay, so the issue of women's advancement in academia is a complex and fascinating issue,
and I wish you a productive conference, and again, I apologize, and I agree,
that I am sorry I cannot take part - as you know, the urgent supersedes the important - you know this.
With out a doubt, in the struggle for gender equality in academia, justice and ethics are on our side,
social and cultural dynamics are on our side,
and at the end of the day, we will achieve our goal.
Make a difference, as Ruth said. Thank you very much.
Thank you, and now I would like to call upon Tamar Herzig,
who will present opening greetings, but very special greetings,
expressing the kind of outlook that relates to the topic we are going to be discussing later today.
Hello, everyone, and many thanks to Prof. Ruth Arnon, President of the IASH,
and thank you to Prof. Yael Hanin, Chairman of the Young Academy,
and thank you to Dr. Avital Stein for the greetings. Thank you to the IASH
for hosting us here in their auditorium. My name is Tamar Herzig, and I am a historian from Tel Aviv University.
You have heard, in the last few minutes, and you will be hearing a lot in the course of the day, about the present and about our hopes for the future,
I would like to begin, big surprise, with the past, specifically,
because universities are institutions that originated in the late Middle Ages, maybe even the mid Middle Ages,
and the first universities in the world were established in Europe
in the late 11th century, and in the 12th century,
and also, like many institutions in that era, they were open to men only.
So, if in 1088 we have a university in Bologna,
already 400 years later, in 1488,
we already have written evidence, written by a woman, this woman,
that she is denouncing this situation. This is the humanist, the Italian (thank you), Laura Cereta,
who expressed and publicized her protest against her exclusion from teaching,
and even from studying, in the university. She published a letter, in which the following claim appears.
She wrote it in Latin, a language most of the women in her time were not able to learn, but she did learn it,
and I will quote it in Hebrew translation:
Nature bestows the freedom to learn, on all people equally.
Knowledge is not given as a gift but is achieved by means of study,
because a free and eager mind that is undaunted by hard work, will always advance higher,
for the better, and the desire to study will grow in depth and in breadth, end of quote.
Almost 200 years passed, until 1678,
when a doctoral degree, or some university degree, was granted to a woman,
in a way that we may ascertain that it really happened, whereas there are all sorts of legends of previous occurrences,
but the first woman in the world, who we know received a doctoral degree, in 1678, as stated,
was Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia, who did not study in a university either -
she, too, was unable to study formal studies in any institution, in any phase of her studies.
She received her education through intensive tutelage from her father,
and, among other things, private teachers came to her home,
including a local Jewish rabbi, who came to her home and taught her Hebrew,
but besides this, professors from the local university came to teach her at home, since she could not attend the university,
and, although she did not study in a formal way, she did attain a level in her studies, which enabled her to pass the examination in order to receive the title of Doctor of Philosophy.
She failed as a Doctor of Theology, but she did obtain the title of Doctor of Philosophy.
She was unable to work afterwards in an academic position, but she was accepted, which is an interesting fact, in my opinion,
as a member of six different academies of sciences, and in that era, in the 17th century,
the phenomenon of academies of sciences was flourishing, especially in Italy.
I will continue about Italy - I am an historian of Italy - and it just so happens that these exciting things were happening in Italy -
The second woman ever, in the world, who was granted the title of doctor, was also an Italian -
the scientist Laura Bassi - she was a scientist - and she received the degree in 1732.
Bassi was also, apparently, the first woman in the world who got a job offer from a university.
She served as an actual professor in the University of Bologna.
However, notwithstanding the great esteem she was accorded, Bassi, like Cereta, was aware of the exclusion of women
as active participants in the different fields of science.
Women in this era, in the 18th century, were indeed active as patrons of scientists.
Scientific papers were dedicated to them, and they attended academic forums on various subjects,
but, except for Bassi, they did not play an active role as scientists,
and Bassi herself, even though she did, as we would say today, break through the glass ceiling,
she did, nevertheless, protest about the situation, and she asked, for example,
in one of her writings, how is it possible,
in her days, that it is accepted for women to rule countries as monarchs,
but the phenomenon of a woman, who is in essence, whose main characteristic is as a thinker and an investigator,
this phenomenon still arouses astonishment.
Less than 300 years passed from the time Bassi began working as a professor -
this was not in the 1730s but several decades later -
and in a little less than those 300 years, many changes had transpired in the character of the academic institutions.
In the West, one of the significant changes that are relevant for us today, is that these institutions changed, gradually,
in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, from completely male institutions
to mixed institutions with regard to gender.
If Laura Cereta, about whom I spoke first, desperately sought figures of enlightened women,
with whom she could identify, and in order to base her claim that it is impossible to view her
as some kind of exceptional phenomenon - she also prepared a list of scholarly women,
and this list begins with the Queen of Sheba,
it concludes with only three women, who lived in her era, whose existence she knew of,
and who were considered scholars.
Fortunately, the situation nowadays is very different,
and I hope each and every one of the men and women in the audience, can think of more than three women,
who are well known scientists in recent times.
So, things have been improving, but the extent of the changes, which have been taking place in recent years,
and everything that has to do with the integration of women in academic faculties, which can be learned from this slide,
a slide that presents the gender segmentation, a slide prepared by Oded Hod, whom I saw before in the audience -
thank you, Oded - which presents the gender segmentation of the scientists who were selected for the opening group of scientists for the Young Academy this year,
and you can see the women compared to the men.
In the course of the next two hours, we will be hearing some of the (female) members of the Young Academy,
and we will also be hearing some other (female) scientists, who are prominent in their fields, and who have been included in recent years in Israeli universities.
The program - which I hope all of you took at the entrance. We hope the success stories of these [female] scientists will encourage outstanding [female] students
to continue on to more advanced studies, and also to really succeed, ultimately, and impact the gender bias,
which still exists in universities, also in Israel,
and it is a subject that will return in the course of the day - but I cannot refrain from mentioning it -
Like other institutions whose establishment came about hundreds of years ago,
in the universities, in our times, too, there is still gender bias,
which causes the proportion of women on the senior levels to still be significantly low
compared to their proportion among the students - you heard about this from Avital -
and you will be hearing about it in the course of the day. The gender challenges we are still facing today,
and the attempts being made in recent years in order to deal with these challenges,
will be addressed at the last two sessions of our conference today.
As you can see, our schedule is very tight, even though we had one cancellation, from Dr. Lihi Zelnik-Manor,
but most of the speakers at the first two sessions will also be staying with us for the final session,
so it will also be possible, at that session, to ask them questions, if time does not allow for it, or allow for it enough, in the course of the morning.
Do I have time for a few words of thanks?
I do, so I would conclude with words of thanks.
I would like to thank, first and foremost, my friends on the executive committee of this conference,
whose committment enabled the idea of this conference to attain realization,
Talia Fisher and Sharon Zukerman - you will be hearing them later today -
and Michal Feldman, who is not in Israel at the moment,
We would like to thank the Board of Directors of the Young Academy,
Sharon Aharonson-Lehavi and Roded Sheran, and the chairman, Yael Hanin,
for their enthusiastic support in promoting this initiative,
and also to thank some of the members of the Young Academy, who advised us in various ways at the different stages of organization,
or who assisted us in different ways: Yonina Eldar, David Enoch, Oded Hod, Reem Sari and Rotem Sorek,
the Academy itself, as noted, the IASH, not only for hosting us here on its premises,
but also for allowing us to benefit from their wonderful team,
and thanks to Avital Ber and to Kochi Meimran, and special thanks to Galia Finzi,
whose enthusiasm and support were a source of inspiration for all of us,
and in conclusion, thanks to everyone present for coming here to attend the first event
organized by the Young Academy of Israel, and I am pleased to call upon Prof. Yael Hanin,
who will be chairing our first session.
So, the objective of this conference, is to try and deal with
a great variety of topics, but before we would like to deal with the problems and the challenges,
and the painful issues that have been accompanying, as it were, humanity, for hundreds of years,
we wanted to begin with something a little different. We wanted to present an angle, which is perhaps more opitimistic -
which sets the challenges aside a bit - we are not ignoring them - we will be talking about them, and we will try to cover all of them -
but we wanted to begin from the reality, one aspect of reality that some of us experience today
and present it to those present, maybe to the general public,
if we are able to get this message out, and the best way for us to do this,
is by means of young women scientists - the list is purposely based on young women scientists -
not that we have chosen to exclude older women scientists, but we did wish to introduce a young voice,
and we have, in the first session, we have three young lecturers, and we will begin -
one of them was canceled, the last one - and we will begin with Meital Reches,
who is - Dr. Meital Reches, a graduate of Tel Aviv University, and I had the honor of meeting her,
when she was this little. Today she is on the faculty of the Hebrew University,
and she is succeeding in the field of biotechnology. The audience is very wide,
so part of the challenge will also be to present the research - a small warning to Meital, and also to the audience -
Many thanks to those who organized this conference, who invited me -
I will tell you about my scientific path, and when I sat down to prepare the presentation for this conference,
the first thing I had to contend with was the title.
The subjects of my research are diverse, and you will soon see. I went from biology
and finally got to chemistry, and I studied some subjects on the way, in physics,
about substances, which is called soft metaphysics,
I will not talk about the more difficult subjects -
and then I remembered that a year ago I gave a lecture at an EMBO conference.
EMBO, as you may know, is an organization that gives scholarships to post-doctoral students - I was one of the recipients of their grants -
for a post-doctorate, and when I arrived in Israel,
and I got a position, they invited me to give a speech to their grant recipients,
to tell them about my progress, and they were the ones that gave me this title -
a bit bombastic, My Scientific Autobiography and Life in Science,
and it was a title I had in Heidelberg almost a year ago,
and it is my heading today,
so I will tell you about my life in science,
and I will begin with my autobiography, and, as Yael already noted,
that we knew each other when I was a student in Tel Aviv,
I studied for my bachelors degree in biology,
and at the end of the second year I joined the lab of Prof. Ehud Gazit.
when he was a scientist just starting out -
today he is the Chief Scientist at the Ministry of Science.
After four years, after having done a period of research there for my bachelors degree,
I continued there and studied for my doctorate in his lab.
After four years I traveled for my post doctorate at Harvard,
in the lab of Prof. George Whitesides, in the Chemistry Department,
and in 2010, in October 2010,
I arrived at the Hebrew University, and today I am a research scientist in the Chemistry Institute.
So I will tell you about my research, and I will try to address the public at large.
This is the title of my thesis:
Molecular Self-Assembly: From Amyloid Fibrils to Peptide Nanostructures.
I knew there are many concepts here, that
many of you may not be familiar with, so I will make it user friendly,
First of all, amyloids are the structures that you can see here.
This is a picture with an electron microscope, of fibrous structures, which are made of proteins,
and these structures cause different illnesses, they are connected to different illnesses.
Various proteins produce these fibers, which infiltrate different tissues,
and cause a long list of illnesses. In Alzheimers's, for example,
a protein produces these fibers, and these fibers are found in the brains of people with Alzheimer's.
I will not go into the connection - it is not a very clear connection, but it is what we know today.
Amyloids are found in Alzheimer's patients, in the pancreas of older diabetics -
why do these structures form, what causes them to be formed in the body,
and how they cause illness - this was the subject of my research in the beginning of my doctoral studies.
so, as I already said, in Alzheimer's disease, they find these amyloid fibers in the brain,
and these fibers are related to the death of neurons.
In my doctorate I studied this sequence of proteins -
each of these letters refers to a different amino acid. This is the protein sequence,
and we wanted to find out what caused the production of amyloids
in Alzheimer's, so we studied different fragments of this protein,
and we found that a short sequence of this protein creates not amyloid fibrils but nanotubes.
actually tubes whose diameters is a nanometer on a scale of 200 nanometers,
and it was very interesting,
because they had a great similarity, they had a great morphological resemblance
to the carbon nanotube, which is a very important module in the world of nanotechnology,
and we saw that they had a great number of advantages,
and the picture you can see here is a picture with an electron microscope, of carbon nanotubes,
and these are the tubes we succeeded in producing in the lab,
and these tubes have advantages, because they can be created spontaneously in a solution of water,
and as we later saw, that they are also very stable in very difficult conditions,
they are stable at boiling, and in organic solvents, and we used them for a wide variety of applications.
One of the applications was to produce nanometric metallic threads.
Another application was for use with sensors,
so, for example, if we were to take some electrode, in this case a sensor for glucose,
and on it we load the peptide nanotubes, we can cause an increase in the surface area of the electrode,
and to sense, with greater sensitivity, our analyte, in our case glucose.
We also found that different derivatives, that one derivative of this peptide
is able to produce gels, which is what you see here.
It is possible, using a syringe, to inject the gel and write all kinds of letters,
this too belongs to my period in Tel Aviv,
and we grew, on these gels, different cells,
and this led to the discovery and creation of a great many peptide structures.
You can see spheres here, fibrils, tubes, and so on,
which they discovered could be used for all kinds of applications, and there is a lot of interest in this in the world,
in a lot of research in the world, and some of the groups that are now studying this topic,
there is research being done in Brazil, in Germany, Korea, USA, Singapore, Denmark, and the list is long.
Since I was researching this subject, and I completed my thesis,
I had to find a lab, where I could continue studying for my post doctorate -
I must note that already in the beginning of my path,
in 2003, when I was still at the beginning of my doctorate,
I knew that I want to continue to an academic position, and I knew this was the way,
and I looked for a place. The problem was that everything interested me.
It was very difficult to decide at that stage and to focus on something.
So, what do you do? So I joined the lab of George Whitesides,
in the Chemistry Department at Harvard - this lab deals with a very great variety of fields -
starting with the biology of the cell, to the physics of flames,
how fire is created, and what is the source of lightning,
what is the source of the universe. You could really find every field there,
which someone might be considering in the natural sciences - a very big lab,
and there I took part in many projects - I will not describe them all -
but I will describe one research topic, which was developing diagnostic methods for developing countries,
and the idea, the motivation for the study, came from - let's say one of us
were stuck in a developing country, such as in Africa, or even a resident of Africa,
who has a particular medical situation. Suddenly, he is ill, and there is no medical equipment around,
There is no lab. How can a medical diagnosis be made for a urine sample
or from a drop of blood that may be taken by pricking the finger.
There is no nurse to take a blood sample. All that is possible is to take a small drop of blood,
which contains a few microliters of the liquid, and a urine sample.
so we want a method that is cheap, and one of the methods that is popular today,
which I presume some of you are familiar with, which is dipsticks,
in fact, every pregnancy test today is based on paper,
they do it on paper, and the idea was, how is it possible to use paper,
which is a cheap material, without any lab equipment,
to develop diagnostic methods.
So we used this apparatus, which is called a plotter. It's a kind of old printer,
which you can find on ebay and purchase for fifty dollars,
and we made a certain modification to this plotter,
and we created - this plotter has a pen, as you can see here,
and we created some other kind of pen, one that can be filled with a polymer.
This polymer can then be printed on paper,
and we create a system of channels on the paper, which create a hydrophobic barrier,
and you get a row of channels like this. The channels are micronic,
and if we spread a small drop - in this case it is paint, but if it is a small drop of blood,
the blood will spread out into a large number of channels.
So you can also consider how to put the blood on the paper. You can fold the page,
If you want to dispose of this device later on, you can simply burn it.
Also, if you consider methods of transport, shipping it is relatively cheap. Paper is a relatively light substance.
So here you can see how it is possible to print micronic channels on paper,
which can be used for diagnostics. Here is an example of such a sample,
in this case a test for glucose and a test for protein,
and we found that the more our protein increases, the concentration of glucose increases, and we get a darker color on the paper,
and we know that we have an indication, we know there is glucose. In the case of protein,
we have a change in the color of the paper, from yellow until blue for the higher concentrations.
Another point to consider, if you think that cellular phones are already today so ubiquitous,
and cameras in cell phones are so ubiquitous, then it will be possible to photograph these tests
and send them to the doctor. That is, also for the analysis of this sample,
you can go up one level and do things that are a little more complicated,
and send them via cellular phone.
Another such platform - I won't go into the details, but you could also consider using threads.
If we spoke about paper - paper is made of cellulose - also cotton threads
could be used for the same platforms. Here, too, one may create from threads the channels that will conduct a biological liquid,
and undergo a diagnostic system like this - a diagnostic device.
Here are several examples. This is a system which can be dipped.
You could sew a thread onto a bandaid and put it on the skin,
and then you can get a diagnosis of what is on the skin - if there is some kind of wound, for example, on the skin.
Here are some examples of relevant biological physiological tests, so, again, a test for protein,
a test for nitrates and ketones - this is the system before,
you can see that the change of color is very pronounced, and it is easily possible to test yourself
by means of these calorimetric tests.
So, as I said, in 2010 I returned to Israel
after almost four years at Harvard. I had managed, meanwhile,
to also give birth to a baby girl. I returned to Israel with a child, and with my husband, of course,
I had managed to take care of him, too, during that period of time,
and today, in my lab we are doing a combination
of subjects connected to the chemistry of surface areas, which were topics I worked on for my post-doctorate,
and topics connected to the chemistry of peptides. So, there are four main topics,
that deal with this interface between protein and a surface, between peptides and surfaces,
I'll just give two examples -
one of the subjects is the motivation for developing structures, which are complex structures,
the motivation for this research comes from a question that was raised in a special journal of Science,
How far can we push chemical self-assembly?
and the idea is, that in nature we have very complex structures, like this tree,
and not only does it have a tree trunk and leaves,
but it also has the important function of energy conversion, converting solar energy into chemical energy.
So, could we ever create, in a test tube, this kind of material.
As I showed you before, it is possible, with peptides, to produce a great variety of forms,
but it is still not close to this structure,
and I have not even spoken about function, at all,
which is one of the topics we are working on in the lab -
how is it possible to develop substances that are structurally complex -
one of our approaches is not to use a test tube like this one -
most experiments today are done with test tubes like this one, which contains one kind of monomer,
one type of peptide, or one type of DNA molecule,
but using this kind of heterogeneous test tube, in which there is a combination of substances,
and I will just show you one demonstration,
in this case, we used two identical peptides, protein fragment peptides,
I already showed you the formation of these tubes.
This similar peptide produces these spheres,
and when we combined the two, we produced a kind of heterogeneous solution of them,
we got these complex structures of molecular chains,
and today we are researching their applications.
One of the interesting applications is to use them to produce biomaterials
for tissue engineering and tissue regeneration,
and this is because of the great morphological similarity between the structures we found,
and the structures produced by the protein fibronectin.
Do I have another minute?
That's it? I finished? Okay, so I will skip the last topic,
I would just acknowledge - so, first of all to my instructors along the way, men -
there were many collaborations with women along the way, among them Prof. Yael Hanin,
Judith Rishpon, Schachar Richter, Smadar Cohen - scieintists at Harvard,
and to the members of my group, and to the different foundations,
thank you for listening.
The next speaker - I am pleased to call upon Prof. Sara Eyal from the School of Pharmacy at the Hebrew University.
Good morning. I would like to thank the organizers, who invited me to speak this morning,
and I would like to present my work as an individual case, as something more generic,
it is therefore less important for me to present the details of the work itself
and to relate more to the track, and how it may also project onto others here in the auditorium, mainly in the life sciences.
The name of my project, in general, is Barriers to the Brain,
but I would rather say Barriers of the Brain, and I will soon explain why.
My academic path was actually mostly in the School of Pharmacy of the Hebrew University,
I started as a student of pharmacology - I am actually a pharmacist by training,
and if I ever decide to leave academia one day, I can always go on to Super Pharm,
and in the next stage I began a masters degree in clinical pharmacology,
which is a field in pharmacology where the pharmacist actually advises not only the patient
but also the doctor as to pharmaceutical treatment, but my research project was already done in a lab.
And this was the stage at which I decided that I liked academia,
and I could have stayed with that knowledge for a long time, but it was actually my husband, who told me
that if I wish to continue in academics, it would be worthwhile for someone to know about it,
and this was exactly an important key point, from which everything started to happen -
I told my advisors that academia was nice, and it would be nice if I could stay,
and they also thought that there was compatibility,
and when I started my doctorate, I was already quite marked,
for continuing in academics, and my doctorate
was already in an even more narrow field of pharmacology. If I had reduced from pharmocology to clinical pharmacology,
the next stage was reduction from clinical pharmacology to pharmacokinetics,
which is actually the movement of the medications in the body,
how medications are absorbed in the body, the digestive system, where do they go,
why they go in here, why they do not go in there,
and all this by measuring concentrations in the blood,
and it did not seem really satisfactory to me,
that is, what interests us is not what happens to the medication in the blood, but what happens in the brain, for example,
if the medication is supposed to have an effect on the brain, and, unlike Meital, who spoke earlier,
I pretty much knew what I wanted to do when I grow up. I wanted to study simulation,
how all these things are done by simulation, and I decided that the best place to study it
would be at the University of Washington. There they had done the first human study in the simulation
of systems connected to the entry and exit of medications to and from the central nervous system.
Again, as I said, since it was already known
that I was destined to continue, hopefully, if I pass, if I do my work properly for my post-doctorate,
hoping to return to academia, I was also given a very symbolic grant by the rector,
but this grant - Sarah Stroumsa - this grant was really very negligible, financially,
but its importance was in effecting committment - this is something I would like to address later in the discussion -
meaning that it was clear to both sides that there was a sort of declaration of intent,
that the university is considering me as a candidate,
if I pass the required barriers,
and that I wish to return to the university - again, if all the conditions are met,
and then I, in fact, went for a post-doctorate.
I was at the University of Washington for five years.
The first years, I must say, were not easy,
and I - another thing I would like to say -
the decision that was made, way before the bachelors degrees of my husband and myself,
was that the people should do what they want to do,
that is, if we suddenly wish, after studying the ancient history of the Orient,
to switch to pharmacology, then it is okay,
even if we have to limit ourselves financially, we will do it,
and it was very, very crucial, because these things often involve financial concessions,
and one must take it into consideration and not be afraid of it,
and this was, in fact, what enabled both of us to complete our doctoral degrees.
We left for our post-doctoral studies, and, again, it is something that requires cooperation from a spouse,
it is important, and the spouse also has to - I am saying this here to anyone who is thinking of doing this -
you have to take it into account that your spouse may not adjust as easily as you.
Be tolerant about this and supportive,
and, this is a subject for a separate discussion,
but it is a point that is important to remember - a post-doctorate is a positive experience,
almost always - we will get to that soon.
In any event, as I told you, my research focuses on barriers
in the penetration of the brain by substances, and you may view the brain as a fortress,
which does not allow everything to enter it, and is encompassed by a wall,
and gates, and guards who decide who will enter and who will not enter.
Actually, this wall is not our skull, chemically speaking,
and neither are the meninges, as many people sometimes think,
but are the blood vessels that conduct the blood to the brain. The barrier is there.
You see it here, these are the blood vessels, their wall,
very very impenetrable, and this is what limits the penetration of
97 percent, or more, of the medications being developed for the central nervous system,
and impedes, in many cases, the treatment of illnesses in the central nervous system.
We are trying to learn how this barrier works.
One of the methods, and we started this already in the post-doctorate,
one of the methods was positron tomography, the tomography of positrons.
A patient, or an animal, or a healthy volunteer,
is laid down in a scanner, and is injected with a radioactive substance,
the half-life of the radioactive material is very short, and the total exposure is low,
and the penetration of the brain by that material is tracked,
and we can measure it in time, and draw graphs
of concentrations in the brain, concentrations in the blood, and show pretty pictures
of what happens with this or that intervention,
I would not go into all our findings from my post-doctorate,
but it was very interesting, and this field appealed to me,
and I decided to continue. We also did research with primates,
with monkeys, actually pregnant female monkeys. We injected them with the radioactive material,
as you can see here it was not a simple thing,
and there are about twenty people involved in each experiment,
and as far as costs, it was not far from a space shuttle project -
I am exaggerating a little, but it is very expensive. Every day of this work is thirty thousand dollars,
It is very advantageous that nothing should get messed up, and I was responsible for this circus,
so there was considerable pressure, but it was possible to get through,
and what's nice is that you take the same monkey, put her in the MRI,
you see her, and her fetus, here you can see the head,
here you se the fetus - you can zoom in to the fetus,
and here, when you inject the radioactive substance,
I will, again, not go into the details of what particular protein we were testing,
it's less interesting. You can still see the head here,
and here is the column of the fetus and the liver of the fetus,
and then some kind of culture is added, some kind of medication,
which inhibits that protein, which is an important part of the barrier, in the brain and also in the placenta.
This is what you see. Suddenly, radioactive material can enter the brain very well,
and also pass well through the placenta, accumulating in the liver of the fetus,
and all these things are actually teaching us, in a functional way,
what those different proteins at those barriers in the body can do,
and, as I told you, the costs of these experiments are very expensive.
At that point I got an offer from the Hebrew University.
I returned to a position - actually to a track for tenure at the Hebrew University,
two and a half years ago, at the School of Pharmacy - it is a bit like coming home -
these things have advantages and disadvantages -
and I cannot allow myself to do experiments that cost thirty thousand dollars these days,
so we seek alternative methods to do things like this, and also other fields of research,
and here we are researching similar things with different simulation methods, with near infrared,
and, again, I will not go into the details.
Other projects we have are not just to check the absorption of medications in the brain,
but also in cells of the immune system, in situations of illness.
The barrier I mentioned is not only a barrier for the penetration of medications,
but also into cells in the immune system - usually,
the cells of the immune system, in general, do not enter the central nervous system.
In situations of illness, and we are studying epilepsy,
the barrier is broken, there is penetration in cells of the immune system,
and we are taking advantage of this in order to locate the sick tissue in the brain by means of simulation.
We give the animal, which has epileptic seizures, marked nanoparticles,
and track them by means of MRI and also by means of fluorescence.
You can see our nanoparticles inside cells, a certain population of cells,
within the afflicted region of the brain. The nanoparticles are marked here in purple,
in an animal with epilepsy, in an animal with epileptic seizures,
but not in a healthy animal. There are all kinds of criticisms. I won't go into them.
This work is actually applied work.
It began by collaboration with neurologists and neurosurgeons from Hadassah.
They are the ones who want these nanoparticles, and as far as they are concerned,
they would be glad, tomorrow morning, to bring this into the clinic, if it were possible,
but there is still a long way to go,
and all these things are being done by us
in the lab at the School of Pharmacy, as I said, in collaboration with a scientist at Hadassah,
and I am in the middle of the track for tenure.
I have two and a half years left. I have two children.
The children have in the meantime gotten a little bigger.
All along the way, there was cooperation on the part of my spouse -
this is very important, and it's not that he picked the kids up every day at four,
but there certainly was support. Another thing - for anyone afraid of traveling abroad for a post-doctorate,
I would like to say again, that it was really an excellent experience,
and you can see my first group in the United States.
There is almost nothing here you could consider American about them.
Indians, Chinese, all kinds of people.
My first boss, my first mentor, was Indian.
After that I had one who was an American [woman], and then another American [woman], who was a devout Catholic,
and another one was Jewish - he wasn't so religious,
and really, it was very, very multi-cultural,
and we very much enjoyed this exposure to more cultures -
that's me in the middle here -
it is really a very, very successful experience altogether,
I will skip all this - this is what I did for my post-doctorate -
When I said barriers of the brain, I would like to relate to the barrier that is most important,
which is our barrier, when we are afraid to do it,
and there is no reason. Anyone who works hard,
and - as I said, you need the support - and wants to do it,
does not have to be afraid. I did not say that everyone will succeed in returning to academia.
but I think there is some kind of -
mainly for my women friends - there was a great deal of fear,
that we won't succeed at it, that we won't succeed in getting in, that we won't succeed in getting grants,
and those who did do it, succeeded and succeeded very well.
So, I would like to encourage you not to be afraid.
To continue the sequence, which has been wonderful so far,
I would like to call upon Dr. Rachela Popovtzer - I am never sure I am pronouncing it correctly -
who is a graduate of Tel Aviv [University], even in my department,
and who today is on the faculty at Bar Ilan [University] - now as an engineer.
As Yael said, I am now at Bar Ilan University,
I am in the Engineering Department at Bar Ilan,
I will start by talking about what I am working on.
I am working with nanoparticles, mainly with cancer.
On the slide, you will see the bombastic word, theranostic application -
What are theranostic applications? In the future of -
I will begin by first describing my research a bit,
I will begin by describing my research a bit, not a lot,
and then I will describe to you the field in which I am working, maybe the approach of women in this field,
how women with families deal with it,
and mainly, perhaps, the advantages in this profession for women specifically.
The research I am doing, in general,
is called Managing Cancer in the Future, which is about the future of cancer treatment,
and the imaging of cancer, which is call the theranostic approach.
Theranostic is a word comprised of therapy and diagnostic,
that is, therapy, treatment, and also diagnostics.
As we know today, regardless of all the medications invented for cancer,
and regardless of all the innovative treatments that exist,
early recognition of cancer is still one of the most important parameters
in the possibility for recovery, and therefore, great efforts are invested in trying to identify cancer in its early stages.
In this picture, we see - if anyone recognizes it, it is a picture from a film based on Asimov,
from 1966, called Fantastic Voyage,
which was science fiction, and the vision of Asimov was -
it is amazing to see that what was once science fiction is actually science today, more or less -
so, his vision was that they could introdouce small submarines -
as you see here, these are submarines that could go precisely to the illness,
to examine it, to repair it, and to exit,
which is completely contrary to all that exists today,
because today, all our treatments are systemic.
That is, as soon as a medication is administered, the medication affects the entire body,
and, as we are familiar with all the harsh side-effects from cancer treatments,
for example, because the action is acting on all the cells in the body and is not a focused action.
Similarly, the whole manner of imaging today,
all the imaging today - and we are all familiar with imaging media such as CT, MRI and ultrasound,
the most popular imaging media are media that are called structural imaging,
which means that we see structures, and we do not know exactly what is inside,
we have to do some kind of biopsy, but we see these structures,
and we cannot track specific molecules or a specific genetic feature,
when we know that the genetic feature of the specific illnesses, or the development of the illnesses,
appear at a much earlier stage than when we go to the doctor and say something hurts.
It appears far earlier. Therefore, the motivation is to try, also in imaging,
to succeed in examining illnesses, in general, and today to know something about cancer, at earlier stages.
What we are doing is, we are taking gold nanoparticles,
and we are using gold for a few reasons.
For one thing, because gold creates a very high contrast in CT.
We know that healthy cells and cancerous cells have about the same density,
and it is therefore very, very hard to examine them, because their density is the same, and in a CT it is impossible to see them
Gold has a very high density. It is one of the substances in nature with the highest density,
and we therefore take the nanoparticles and tie them to specific cells in the body. It is very easy to see them.
There are other reasons why it is advantageous to use nanoparticles.
and this pertains to basic science, which we are doing in the department,
which is the Department of Engineering and is mainly applied science -
there is a lot of basic science, which mainly relates to the ability to track processes
and all kinds of phenomena that occur in the body,
because just as we see no difference between cancerous cells and the healthy cells,
we also cannot track the development of certain cells within the body,
or certain molecules inside the body. We don't see them. We don't see the difference between one molecule and another,
but as soon as we succeed in taking certain cells, and doing an upload - inserting gold nanoparticles into them,
we can actually track them within the body and see where they are going,
how medications are affecting them, a great deal of information that we are lacking at present.
This is just one example of things that we manage to see -
It is part of an imaging of a mouse,
and we see here, with really high resolution, all the blood vessels -
this is the heart, these are the blood vessels - this is actually an imaging with nanoparticles introduced into the blood flow.
Here we see the same miserable mouse, without the nanoparticles.
As we can see, all we can see with a CT are the bones.
That is, the good contrast is only produced between things with high density and things with low density.
and it is not at all possible to see soft tissue, but when we insert nanoparticles, we can see it very well.
What we can see here is a mouse with a cancerous tumor,
and we see that with a CT we can see almost nothing.
We don't see the difference between the tumor and the whole organism,
and it is really very difficult to detect cancerous tumors that are - this one is less than half a millimeter.
This is 3 or 4 millimeters. As we know, it is not possible at present to detect cancerous tumors of this size.
Here we can see the cancerous tumor after having injected - six hours after having injected the mouse with gold nanoparticles,
and it is possible to see how these gold nanoparticles are accumulating on the tumor,
and it is visible on the CT without seeing any radiologists -
We do not need any prior information, and we see that there is much higher density in this area,
and it is actually a new technique that can be used for imaging methods
and also methods for therapy. What I mean by therapy is that when we have succeeded in bringing gold nanoparticles to a tumor in a concentrated way,
then the sky is the limit - it is just a matter of time.
It is possible to connect medications to this from the sides, to shine light on it,
that will heat it in order to burn the tumor. It is possible to do all kinds of things in order to treat,
in order to treat the tumor in a selective way, not in a systemic way.
So far, this is more or less what I am working on,
but they did not bring us here for a scientific lecture -
Therefore, I will describe to you a little - I will tell you about the path I followed,
and also about some of the insights I got along the way.
When they invited me here - and thank you very much to those who invited me -
I sat and thought I really did not know what I would say,
I did not have an agenda for women in academia.
I never had such a feeling. So, I was sitting yesterday having lunch with my academic [women] friends,
and I told them I had to come here today with some conclusions I could talk about.
If I may tell you my biography, I started studying physics. My undergraduate studies were physics and philosophy, later at Bar Ilan [University],
and then I went to Tel Aviv [University], where I studied engineering.
I did a doctorate in electrical engineering,
and then I traveled for a post-doctorate to the University of Michigan, just for two years,
Everyone was there longer - I was in Michigan only two years,
and then I returned to Israel, to Bar Ilan University.
Contrary to what was said by those before me, that they always knew they wanted to do research, and at a certain point they did,
I can say that it was not so for me. At each and every stage of my life I had to make a decision -
and it was not a trivial decision, and it was not an easy decision to make,
there are always advantages and disadvantages - also after the bachelors degree, whether to do a masters degree,
and then whether to do a doctorate, and then whether to travel to do a post-doctorate -
and then when I returned from the post-doctorate, I wasn't sure this was the only option,
and I checked other possibilities besides working in academia, and today I am very happy to be in academia,
and I think that - as I said - Yael promised that later we would address all the problems and difficulties
and the glass ceiling for women in academia, but I will speak specifically about the advantages for women in academia.
The first thing I would like to say is that in the course of making the choices one has to make,
it is important to make successful decisions and not to take them lightly.
When you decide where to do a doctorate, and where to do a post-doctorate,
it is very important to choose the supportive instructors and the supportive community,
which will enable you to do the research.
I started my doctorate with three children, and, in the course of my doctorate, I had another baby.
I certainly needed a supportive boss,
who would allow me to advance academically, who would promote me and also not make me feel uneasy.
This is why I made such a big picture of Yossi Shahaf and Judith Rishpon -
who really gave me all the capabilities, all the opportunities,
and never examined me according to the criterion of hours,
even though, in the end, we do work loads of hours, but if I did show up or I didn't show up,
if a child was sick, it was never an issue.
In the end, what they want to know is that there is an outcome, that at the end of the month, at the end of the year, at the end of the semester,
that you did the work, that you did the research, and, as women, we know that we can do it - that we will always complete the work.
and someone who lives in the midst of this, who loves it, if she cannot do it in the morning, she will do it in the evening,
and if she does not finish it in the evening, she will do it at night, and she will always find the way to do it.
but it is hard to work in labs, where there is a time clock when you start and when you finish,
when you have to be there certain hours, because if there is a sick child at home,
instead of getting up at night and taking care of the child, you say, what will I tell them at work tomorrow,
what am I going to say, it's the third time already, and so and so forth,
so I think this is one of the very important choices, and later for the post-doctorate,
to choose the people who understand and enable,
and understand the necessities of women. In general, one of the advantages - we said we would talk about the advantages of academics -
maybe the main thing in academics is the human capital in it.
In the stage of the doctorate, in the stage of the post-doctorate, and afterwards,
maybe as opposed to, or even better than other workplaces,
in academia we can decide if we want to work, in collaborations, at the beginning and also at the end,
which I think has the greatest influence on our progress, on our liking the work, on our being happy with the work,
so this is one of the main things I want to say.
With the two conclusions I left lunch with yesterday,
two main things, for women who are successful in science,
don't take me literally, men also have this, but for women who somehow succeed,
but for women, who somehow manage to succeed,
and I don't think it is only in science, I assume it is so in any other field - it is to have priorities.
You have to be very focused, and you have to have priorities.
There is always a lot to do - we always have a million things to do -
a week can go by, and we have not accomplished anything,
and we were busy the whole time, without even time to breathe,
but still we did not do what we really had to do.
So this is really one of the most important things that you have to work on all the time -
it is not something that's so easy, and this is one of the things, I think,
that are most important things that lead to success.
The third thing, maybe as women in academia and as mothers,
is to completely let go of guilt feelings.
Maybe it matters whom you are saying this to, maybe you cannot say it to everyone,
but you cannot be a perfectionist in everything. You cannot be a hundred percent successful
a hundred percent of the time, in a hundred percent of your tasks.
I assure you that your house is not going to be the cleanest house,
that your cakes will not be the best cakes, that you have to decide what is important and what is not important,
and also, in general, in this combination of science and academics,
there are times when you have to invest more at home, and there are times when you have to invest more at work,
but you have to let go of guilt feelings -
anyone who has decided and chosen to have a career, and has children and a job,
knows that she has to cope with both of them, and ultimately,
the time that we spend at work, we work many many hours,
weekends, evenings, nights - it is impossible to feel guilty all day long -
that we did not invest enough in our children. Children grow up okay, if the mothers think it is okay.
This is, at least, the approach I developed for myself,
and I hope that my children also think so,
but - this is more or less what I wanted to say - but in the end,
as far as the advantages and disadvantages, I think that if we compare an academic career
to other careers that are also challenging, like, for example,
to be doctors and to work in hi-tech, or to work in other places,
women in academia actually have many advantages. One of them is the flexible time.
Although we work many, many hours, we can play around with it the way we wish.
It is very different than doctors, where there is no getting around it.
They cannot leave to go home at ten, because their child phoned from school and said he vomited.
They have seventy people waiting to see them in the clinic. I think it eases the pressure a lot.
and it makes a lot of things possible,
On the other hand, when we get home, we always bring our work with us.
Unlike other people, who no matter what time they get home, even if it is ten at night, they can close the door,
for us, in general, work is all the time.
Another advantage, as I said before, is that we can choose the people we work with,
and I think this is one of the things that contributes to our well-being,
that we work with people we get along with, that we are fond of,
and we have a good time with them,
beyond all these things, it is super-challenging work,
super-interesting, ever new, and we are constantly learning,
and we can actually have a major influence
on society, on science, leave some kind of an imprint,
do something meaningful in life, and I think that with this attitude,
it is easy to go forward.