Science in Israel: A Personal Viewpoint of an Insider
In order to excel in research -- concluded his presentation the head of the
Chemistry School of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
Daniel Mandler -- you
need
- Good infrastructure
- An imaginative way of thinking
- Highly qualified and motivated people
- Competition with the world
- Mix of basic and applied research
- True collaboration
An imaginative way of thinking is what makes a great scientist. Without access to good infrastrctuture, no one can work any longer today in advanced research. In Israel, we only have MSci and PhD students who carry out their research work in the lab and this ensures that we have highly motivated people.
Competition is at international level: We do not compete among ourselves. Our books are in English and we all speak English as Hebrew is not a scientific language. Basic and applied research are closely intertwined and each has much to give to the other and to scientists who practice them both. Finally, we emphasize the importance of true collaboration which exists only when both sides are interested in it.
Research in Israel
Israel has 7 universities an 190,000 students in Tel Aviv, Bar-Ilan, Negev, Jerusalem, Haifa, Technion and Weizemann. At Jerusalem's Chemistry Institute we are 40 researchers working in 4 departments, 4 centers (Casali, Farkas, Lise Meitner and Haber) and the new Kruger Center for Nanoscience.
The GDP is 20,800 USD per capita (in Italy 29,000 USD). According to world academic rank made considering 3 parameters (productivity, quality and priority of research) the HUJI is no.82, i.e., among the world's 100 best universities.
Comparison among countries by the number of papers capita clearly shows that Israel is among the world's leading countries in all science's disciplines; and our students work in the field of their studies. Since when I joined the Faculty in 1990 all forty students who graduated in my group went in the chemical profession: We have a shortage of chemists, in Israel, and the Master degree is the most demanded one by industry.
What makes great Israel's science
An impressive number of Nobel Prizes are Jews; yet, there is no "Jewish gene" for good science. I think that the primary reason for Jewish traditional excellence in science lies in the fact that education of kids is a primary goal of our culture. We were scattered across the world for thousands of years, often submitted to restricting legislation. Our most important asset was therefore knowledge as one can bring it with herself whenever she goes.
Other important reasons are:
- The political situation
- Lack of natural resources
- Mix of culture
- Budget for traveling
- Low funds
Research defense requirements are often present in our universities and all the best people in hi-tech companies come from the Army or from the intelligence. Israel is a small, semidesertic country without natural resources beyond bromine. So, we can only rely on human quality.
We are a mix of Mediterranean and Western cultures. We are not organized and develop improvisation skills. This compensates for lack of organization which is a very good attitude in industry where you have to adopt rapidaly to market's rapidly changing needs.
It is also instrumental that our government passed legislation some 40 years ago for which 10% of our salary goes to a personal budget to enable each scientist to travel. Thus, as soon as you get assistant professor you will get 3,000 USD to travel (or 7,000 USD if you are a full professor). All my collaborations started by personal meeting with scientists at conferences, which is crucially important especially at the beginning.
Finally, we are fighting all the time to raise money. Force researchers to fight for money. It is like good grapes: don't water them too much if you wish to have fully flavored wines. In Russia, the mathematicians developed advanced tools because they had no computational resources available. And the same holds true for science professionals: having to compete for money and for science at international level, we are forced to give our best every day.
From Enzymes to Forensic Science: A Career in Chemistry
Back from a postdoc abroad, a scientist joining a university in Israel must radically change the topic of her research bringing in something new. I made my PhD in photosynthesis and switched to electrochemistry doing my postdoc at the University of Texas at Austin with Allen Bard. There, I have co-developed the SECM technique in which a microelectrode replaces the tip ot the AFM microscope. We can do electrochemistry on a nanoscale below the tip. For example, copper etching at the surfance.
We started research with SAM (self assembled monolayers): if you take vitamin, it often contains Cr(III); but Cr(VI) is a dangerous cancerogen which must be detected. We developed a selective electrode made of gold coated with pyridinium thiol with a detection limit for Cr(Vi) of 2.3x10E-11 M (!).
Yet, polymers are far better than simple monolayers. We make for instance sol-gel molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) in which the selectivity comes from the imprint process. For example, the herbicide Parathion is detected by one such electrode while structurally similar Paraoxon is not.
More recently, with David Avnir, we developed sol-gel electrodeposition. Electrodeposition is much better than any other technique because it will cover any single part. For example, we are trying to coat medical stainless stent with polymer in order to make it more biocompatible and also to use the coating for controlled drug release. Adhesion of electrodeposited coatings is largely enhanced.
Also, we just produced new great films made of 80 nm silica nanoparticles containing a fluorescent dye. The nanoparticles are made by Israeli company SGT which invented hollow sol-gel silica particles from mico- to nanometer sized.
Last is forensic science, an hot topic in Israel and in the rest of the world. Ten years ago the Israeli police asked me to develop a method to detect fingerprints in shot bullets so we started collaboration also with the US Secret Service (protecting the President and avoiding money forge). Heat, friction and carbon soot all contribute to cancel the fingerprint but all this did not impede us from developing the fingerprints.
Last month we made great noise publishing an article in ChemComm showing how to develop fingerprints on paper. Nanotechnology is and will ever be of immense relevance to forensic science and we are contributing to the advancement of the field.