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 future of humanity.
Jan 01, 2017...
Prof. Noam Sobel. Credit: Tomer Appelbaum
Talking to: Prof. Noam Sobel of the neurobiology department and the Azrieli Center for Human Brain Imaging, Weizmann Institute of Science, in Rehovot, who studies brain mechanisms related to the sense of smell. Where: His laboratory. When: Sunday, 10 A.M.
How does the sense of smell affect human behavior?
Our primary field of research dealing with that question concerns chemical communication between animals, and in our case, human beings. All animals communicate by means of chemical signals, and we, too, land mammals with an amazing nose, are no different.
Mar 28, 2019...
Imagine the ability to prevent all strains of the flu for many years—in a single shot. In the third episode of Weizmann in Focus, CEO Dave Doneson spotlights Prof. Ruth Arnon’s remarkable progress on a universal flu vaccine. The vaccine, being brought to market by Israeli startup Biondvax, holds the promise of protecting us from current and future varieties of the virus.
Click below to watch—and please share the video with friends via email or social media.
Mar 17, 2020...
Israeli researchers hope to use artificial intelligence to map clusters of the new coronavirus in order to aid government efforts to curb the spread of the disease. To that end, scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem are collecting information about symptoms from interested members of the public.
The scientists leading the new project hope that after they gather sufficient data to prove its efficacy, the Health Ministry will add it to the growing number of tools that are being employed to address this unprecedented public health crisis.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/feature-stories/prof-ruth-arnon-lessons-from-influenza/
Mar 15, 2020...
With infections, as with football, a best offense is often a good defense. But while that strategy works for many infectious diseases, it doesn’t work with influenza; thanks to its readiness to mutate, the influenza virus effectively “shifts the goalposts” each year, requiring a new vaccination.
Renowned Weizmann Institute immunologist Prof. Ruth Arnon is spearheading a new defense—a universal influenza vaccine that is currently in Phase III of the clinical trial process—that focuses on the parts of the virus that stay the same from year to year, gluing the goalpost to the ground once and for all.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/lineage-trees-reveal-cells-histories/
Feb 23, 2012...
Prof. Ehud Shapiro's research team.
REHOVOT, ISRAEL—February 23, 2012—In recent years, a number of controversial claims have been made about the female mammal's egg supply, including that it is renewed over her adult lifetime (as opposed to the conventional understanding that she is born with all of her eggs) and that the source of these eggs is stem cells that originate in the bone marrow. Now, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science have disproved one of those claims and pointed in new directions toward resolving the other. Their findings, based on an original method for reconstructing lineage trees for cells, were published online February 23 in PLoS Genetics.
Jan 13, 2020...
A group of scientists led by a team from the Weizmann Institute of Science has devised a decoy molecule that could lead to the treatment of viruses that cross over from animals to humans.
A host of disease-causing viruses, which are called arenaviruses, “lurk in animal populations in various parts of the world, sometimes crossing over into humans,” the Rehovot-based Weizmann Institute said in a statement. “When they do cross over, they can be lethal, and only very few treatments exist.”
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/video-gallery/weizmann-in-focus-episode-11-time-to-get-fit/
Feb 07, 2020...
We’re well into the New Year and many of us have resolved to get fit in 2020 … but does the time we work out make a difference? In the latest episode of Weizmann in Focus, Dave Doneson discusses the research of Dr. Gad Asher, who studies the effects of our biological clocks on everything from fitness to jetlag to liver disease.
Find out Dr. Asher’s take on whether mornings or evenings are the best time to hit the gym. Please share the video with friends via email or social media.
Nov 03, 2014...
An in-vitro fertilization (IVF) procedure [Illustrative]. (photo credit:REUTERS)
Two leading biologists at Rehovot’s Weizmann Institute of Science have strongly objected to an offer by Facebook and Apple to the US companies’ female employees to finance the freezing of their ova so they can delay motherhood, as a pathway for improving women’s access to fulfilling careers.
The position paper was issued on Monday by Prof. Michal Neeman, dean of the biology faculty and director of the Clore Center for Biological Physics, and Prof. Nava Dekel of the developmental biology department. Their ire was triggered by the companies’ announcement of October 14.
Jul 21, 2014...
Image via Shutterstock.com
REHOVOT, ISRAEL—July 21, 2014—We have heard that eating beef is bad for the environment, but do we know its real cost? Are other animal or animal-derived foods better or worse? New research at the Weizmann Institute of Science, conducted in collaboration with scientists in the U.S., compared the environmental costs of various foods and came up with some surprisingly clear results. The findings, which appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), will hopefully not only inform individual dietary choices, but those of governmental agencies that set agricultural and marketing policies.Dr. Ron Milo of the Institute’s Department of Plant Sciences, together with his research student Alon Shepon and in collaboration with Tamar Makov of Yale University and Dr. Gidon Eshel in New York, asked which types of animal-based food one should consume, environmentally speaking. Though many studies have addressed parts of this issue, none have done such a thorough, comparative study that gives a multi-perspective picture of the environmental costs of food derived from animals.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/time-to-eat/
Mar 16, 2016...
The circadian clock regulates the mitochondria’s utilization of nutrients throughout the day
When one eats may be as important as what one eats. New research at the Weizmann Institute of Science and in Germany suggests that the cells’ power plants – the mitochondria – are highly regulated by the body’s biological, or circadian, clocks. This may help explain why people who sleep and eat out of phase with their circadian clocks are at higher risk of developing obesity, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome. The research recently appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).