About Us
Founded in 1944, the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science develops philanthropic support for the Weizmann Institute in Israel, and advances its mission of science for the benefit of humanity.
Is a pair of brain structures called the olfactory bulbs, which are said to encode our sense of smell, necessary? That is, are they essential to the existence of this sense? Weizmann Institute of Science researchers recently showed that some humans can smell just fine, thank you, without said bulbs. Their finding – that around 0.6% of women, and more specifically, up to 4% of left-handed women, have completely intact senses of smell despite having no olfactory bulbs in their brains – calls into question the accepted notion that this structure is absolutely necessary for the act of smelling. The findings of this research, which were published in Neuron, could shake up certain conventional theories that describe the workings of our sense of smell.
November 06, 2019
Moodify, a company based on research from Prof. Noam Sobel’s lab, is introducing a product that can eliminate smells from cars – and improve our state of mind. Israel21C reports.
November 05, 2019
Recognizing faces is as natural and habitual as can be for human beings. Even with their undeveloped vision, babies can recognize their mother’s face within days, while adults typically know some 5,000 faces. But what actually happens inside our brains during the process of recognizing a face? How are different facial features encoded in our brains? And can artificial intelligence learn to recognize faces the way humans do?
November 05, 2019
We might refer to someone’s personality as “mousy,” but in truth, mice have a range of personalities nearly as great as our own. Prof. Alon Chen and members of two groups he heads – one in the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Department of Neurobiology and one in the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, Germany – decided to explore personality specifically in mice. This would enable the scientists to develop a set of objective measurements for this highly slippery concept. A quantitative understanding of the traits that make each animal an individual might help answer some of the open questions in science concerning the connections between genes and behavior. The findings of this research were published in Nature Neuroscience.
November 04, 2019
The Weizmann Effect is the remarkable result of granting some of the world’s most innovative scientists the freedom to follow their curiosity, discover the unknown, and partner across disciplines and borders with other inspired minds.
Moreover, The Weizmann Effect is one of the most meaningful and satisfying ways for you to do some lasting good for humanity. It enables people who want to change the world to become people who actually do.
Mr. Lester Crown, longtime Weizmann Institute of Science advocate and philanthropist, discusses his and his family's personal commitment to helping others by supporting the lifesaving research of the Institute.
November 01, 2019
What is the Weizmann Institute of Science? This animated explainer video shows how our scientists give the world hope and optimism through groundbreaking multidisciplinary research.
November 01, 2019
The ocean is one of the largest and most mysterious ecosystems on Earth. In the tenth episode of Weizmann in Focus, Dave Doneson describes the fascinating research of Weizmann Profs. Ilan Koren and Assaf Vardi who set sail aboard the Tara schooner to unlock some of these mysteries. They were among a select group of scientists who traveled thousands of kilometers across all the world’s oceans to advance research and increase environmental awareness. The research conducted on board the schooner yielded hundreds of scientific papers as well as a better understanding of the ocean ecosystem and how it impacts the entire planet.
October 31, 2019
Our brains are so primed to recognize faces – or to tell people apart – that we rarely even stop to think about it, but what happens in the brain when it engages in such recognition is still far from understood. In a new study published in Nature Communications, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science have shed new light on this issue. They found a striking similarity between the way in which faces are encoded in the brain and successfully performing artificial intelligence (AI) systems known as deep neural networks.
October 30, 2019
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