Three exceptional scientists have won this year’s Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in Israel for groundbreaking research in their respective fields.

The Blavatnik Awards were created in 2014 by the Blavatnik Family Foundation to recognize faculty-rank scientists throughout the United States. In 2017, the awards were expanded to honor scientists in Israel, chosen with the help of the New York Academy of Sciences and the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. The awards were also expanded to the United Kingdom.

As 2023 laureates, Shai Carmi of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Rina Rosenzweig and Zvika Brakerski of the Weizmann Institute of Science will each receive a $100,000 grant to be conferred at a ceremony at the Peres Center for Peace & Innovation in June 2023.

Carmi (PhD in life sciences) was recognized for contributions to the fields of population and medical genetics. He reported the first evaluations of a new technology for genetic testing of preimplantation embryos for complex diseases and traits.

Rosenzweig (PhD in chemistry) was honored for discovering the regulatory mechanism by which “chaperone” proteins enable cells to prevent and reverse the protein aggregation associated with neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

Brakerski (PhD in physical sciences and engineering) was recognized for developing an algorithm to improve cloud computing security. The algorithm allows cloud computers to perform computations on encrypted data without the need for decryption.

Head of the Blavatnik Family Foundation Len Blavatnik said that Israel’s science and tech “improves lives and constantly expands the boundaries of discovery.”

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