Seventh annual Bar-Ilan University/Yeshiva University Academic Summer Program provides invaluable training and hands-on laboratory experience to science majors from US universities.
(Courtesy of Bar Ilan University) Ramat Gan, Israel—Discovering which area of the brain is used for counting. Studying beta-catenin, a protein of high importance in biology and medicine that is required for the proper development of tissues in our bodies and that is mutated in many cancers. Focusing on how heat stress affects seed production in plants—of critical importance to agriculture, both in Israel and globally. Three New Jersey undergrads have been hard at work this summer conducting important research in various laboratories at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University.
They are among more than two dozen undergraduate science majors participating in the seventh annual Summer Science Research Internship Program, a joint Bar-Ilan University (BIU)/Yeshiva University (YU) initiative. The program enables students to gain hands-on experience in emerging scientific fields while being mentored by some of Israel’s finest scientists.
During the seven-week research experience, the students conduct intensive internships in the university’s research laboratories with faculty members from the Bar-Ilan Institute for Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials; Gonda (Goldschmied) Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center; Faculty of Engineering; Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences; and the departments of mathematics, chemistry, computer science, physics and English literature and linguistics.
Prof. Ari Zivotofsky, of Bar-Ilan’s Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Program, serves as director of the program. Based on the students’ academic background and interest, he matched students with mentors and research assignments that would both enhance their summer experience and promote individual growth and career development. While the focus is primarily on lab work, the program also includes trips to scientific and industrial sites around the country, including IAI (Israel Aerospace Industries), Teva Pharmaceuticals and the laboratories of the Agriculture Research Organization (Volcani Center), as well as a series of lunch meetings with BIU faculty. To strike the proper “Torah U’Madda” balance, students supplement their daily lab work with nightly chavruta study and shiurim at the Caroline and Joseph S. Gruss Institute kollel in Jerusalem.
“This program provides talented US university science students the opportunity to become embedded in a high-caliber Israeli university lab, thereby experiencing rather than just hearing about what it’s like to live, learn and research in Israel,” according to Zivotofsky. “In the labs they become part of a team and contribute to ongoing projects. Spending their summer with a like-minded group of peers fosters a commitment to research, Israeli science and religious Zionism.”
Yael Eisenberg, Chavi Cohen and Lea Lefkowitz are among a large number of participants in this year’s program who hail from New Jersey.
Twenty-one-year-old Yael Eisenberg, of Passaic, is working with renowned Israeli mathematician Prof. Mina Teicher, a former chief scientist at Israel’s Ministry of Science, former vice president of research at Bar-Ilan University, director of the Emmy Noether Institute for Mathematics and researcher in the department of mathematics and Gonda (Goldschmied) Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center. Eisenberg just finished her junior year at Stern College for Women, where she is pursuing combined BA-MA degrees in Math. She’s conducting research with Teicher and two PhD students from the math and neuroscience departments. They’re using the Magneto Encephalograph (MEG) machine to discover which area of the brain is used for counting. In the framework of this research they show subjects up to five circles and have them type the number of circles they see. They also play up to five beeps and tap subjects up to five times, and have them type the number of beeps/taps. This is an attempt to determine if different parts of the brain are stimulated for different “types” of counting. The MEG, housed at Bar-Ilan’s Gonda (Goldschmied) Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, is a unique apparatus for measuring magnetic fields produced by the brain. It is the first of its kind in the state of Israel (and in the Middle East). Only a few dozen MEG units exist throughout the world.
Prof. Teicher said, “Having Yael join our research was a great added value to our group. She took important tasks upon herself, and I trust that in due time we will have a very good joint research paper ready for publication.” Added Eisenberg, a recipient of YU’s Bertha Kressel Scholarship for 2017-2018 for her research, “The BIU-YU science research program is a great experience in multiple ways. We are conducting research relevant to our fields of interest with top Israeli scientists, in a challenging and encouraging environment. Additionally, we have weekly field trips to various science-related sites in Israel, where we learn and see how Israel is developing world-changing technology/scientific discoveries. I am confident that this summer’s experience will provide a stepping stone for all future research that I do.” says Eisenberg,.
Prof. Yaron Shav-Tal, of the Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences and Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials, is among the Bar-Ilan faculty mentors. This summer, Chavi Cohen, of Teaneck, is working together with a PhD student in Shav-Tal’s lab, which focuses on the protein beta-catenin. This protein is of high importance in biology and medicine since it is required for the proper development of tissues in our bodies. Beta-catenin is mutated in many cancers, for instance, in many types of colon cancer, and as such the aberrant form of the molecule is an important part of the developing tumors. “We’re always happy to host students from the US in our lab for the summer, as we have done several times over the years. It is a pleasure to have Chavi join our group this time, as she brings with her expertise from her experimental work done at Rutgers University,” says Prof. Shav-Tal.
Cohen, who studies biology and just completed her sophomore year at Rutgers, eventually hopes to attend medical school. For the past year and a half she has been working at the Cancer Institute of New Jersey in the Ganesan laboratory where she works on a collaborative project with other cancer institutes across the country on chemoresistance mechanisms in KRAS mutant cancers. “This experience in Israel has given me the opportunity to bring the research techniques I learned at Bar-Ilan back to the Cancer Institute of New Jersey where I can further improve my lab skills,” she says.
Lea Lefkowitz, from Highland Park, is entering her senior year in the Honors Program at Stern College for Women. Majoring in biology and minoring in English, Lea hopes to continue to medical school. Lea has been working in Dr. Gad Miller’s plant research lab under the supervision of Dr. Nicholas Rutley. The lab investigates the response of the plant Arabidopsis thaliana (thale cress) to a variety of abiotic stresses, with Lea’s project focusing on how heat stress affects seed production. Understanding how plants respond to heat stress is of critical importance to agriculture, both in Israel and globally.
“Arabidopsis is a small yet powerful model organism for plant science research and is a versatile system for studying plant-environmental stress interactions,” said Dr. Rutley. Lea used a variety of techniques, at both molecular and physiological levels, to determine the role of certain genes in Arabidopsis. This included monitoring seedling development and pollen germination following application of short-term heat stress. “It was exciting to apply the techniques I previously learned in my lab courses at school and see them in the context of real experiments. Choosing to participate in the Bar-Ilan/YU Research Program was doubly rewarding because it allowed me to gain valuable lab experience as well as spend the summer in Israel,” says Lefkowitz.
In addition to Stern College and Rutgers, this year’s undergrads are studying at Yeshiva University, Cornell University, Rutgers University, Columbia University, Tulane University, Queens College and Macaulay Honors College.
Since its inception seven years ago, the program has benefited from the generosity of Dr. Mordecai D. Katz, honorary chairman of the Bar-Ilan board of trustees, who has supported the YU student participants, and from the J. Samuel Harwit, z”l, and Manya Harwit-Aviv Charitable Trust.
