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.
Oct 23, 2020... In July of 2016, incoming Harvard freshman Eric Sun gazed up at the starry night while camping in the Judean desert. For the first time, Sun, who spent a month in Israel as part of Weizmann’s Dr. Bessie F. Lawrence International Summer Science Institute (ISSI), was thousands of miles away from his family. And yet, the awe-inspiring experience felt to him like a piece of home on the other side of the globe.
Oct 24, 2020...
Most marathoners follow up long training runs with an ice bath and a nap. Gamini Sugathadasa, a bellman at the Four Seasons Hotel Las Vegas, runs 20 miles and then spends eight more hours on his feet. According to his fitness tracker, he averages 14,000 steps during a typical shift.
When the hotel closed in mid-March due to the coronavirus, he made up for the steps by pounding out more miles on his treadmill. The concept of a marathon was foreign to Mr. Sugathadasa until 2009, when he was greeting guests who had finished the Rock ‘n’ Roll Las Vegas Marathon. “I just remember everyone looked so happy,” he says. Intrigued, he left work that day and ran 11 miles. Despite some stiffness, he went out and ran the same distance the following three days. He was a natural.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/blog/in-celebration-of-crispr/
Oct 29, 2020...
In February 2017, in Boston for the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS’s) annual conference, The Curiosity Review snagged a chair in a packed ballroom of attendees.
The main attraction was Dr. Emmanuelle Charpentier. Then a rock star to scientists, today she is headline news; along with her longtime collaborator, Dr. Jennifer Doudna, Charpentier just received the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of CRISPR. The method, which stands for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats,” enables scientists to edit DNA.
Dec 18, 2020... On December 21, 2020, stargazers are in for a once-in-a-lifetime cosmic event: Jupiter and Saturn will appear closer together than at any time in almost 400 years, in an event known as a great conjunction. Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions happen every 20 years. But this year’s happening will be the closest the planets have come since 1623. In this video, Ilan Manulis, Director of the Weizmann Institute’s Martin S. Kraar Observatory explains the science behind this celestial event and shares how to watch it.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/blog/what-is-happening-to-our-sense-of-time-during-covid/
Dec 31, 2020...
We have all experienced a warped sense of time during these Groundhog Blursdays of the pandemic – but why?
Some reasons are obvious. We have lost our guideposts, and events that occurred like clockwork – holidays, birthdays – have largely been cancelled. Seasons and school days aren’t well-defined. Weekends – what’s the diff?
And if you are fortunate enough to work remotely, you no longer have the adjustment period of a commute; going straight from bed to the kitchen coffeemaker to one’s makeshift office is simply not the same. Our environment, clothing, and habits are unchanging.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/blog/star-frequency-tuning-in-to-radio-signals-from-space/
Jan 27, 2021...
As we continue to be isolated so much of the time, it can be comforting (or not, depending) to know that we might not be alone. For instance, we recently encountered what the great Carl Zimmer characterized thusly: “A spooky radio signal showed up after a radio telescope was aimed at the next star over from our sun.”
The mysterious beam was the first big breakthrough from the Breakthrough Listen initiative – part of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program – which scans the galaxy’s radio waves, looking for signals from intelligent life.
May 19, 2021... The Weizmann Institute is made up of scientists and staff from many faiths and more than 50 nationalities. During the current crisis in Israel, the Weizmann Institute community offers a message of hope, unity, and coexistence. As Prof. Maya Schuldiner, Department of Molecular Genetics, says, “We know that the only way to move humanity forward is by working together.” Dr. Yifat Merbl, Department of Immunology, adds, “Just like in science, rather than focusing on the problem, we must start looking for the right solutions.”
Jun 21, 2021...
Around 50,000 years ago, a group of Neanderthals was living in the Negev Desert, near today’s town of Ofakim. No bones remain because the high concentration of gypsum in the soil decomposes the bones, but the stone tool set found there is typical of Neanderthals.
At about the same time, a wave of migration by anatomically modern humans reached a site known as Boker Tachtit, by Kibbutz Sde Boker, as reported in Haaretz. Their bones have also long since turned into dust, but the tools there – defined as Initial Upper Paleolithic tool culture – are typical of Homo sapiens, the archaeologists say. Boker Tachtit appears to have been a sort of waystation for great migration waves of modern humanity out of Africa to Eurasia via the land that is today Israel.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/blog/will-ai-tell-us-what-whales-are-saying/
Jul 08, 2021... In the 70s, an album was released that shared something remarkable, even transformative: recordings of humpback whales singing. The whalesong on the soon-to-be-a-hit album moved people worldwide, and the raised awareness led to the “Save the Whales” movement. Half a century later, technology has evolved a bit from LPs and may be able to help us understand these highly intelligent, mysterious mammals and their eerie songs, their clicks and whirrs.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/video-gallery/a-glimpse-of-the-weizmann-institute/
Jul 12, 2021... Catch a glimpse of the Weizmann Institute’s beautiful, garden-like campus where scientists are working to solve the greatest challenges of our time.