11 Professor Major (retd) Dror Fixler spoke to us while in uniform from a safe room in an army base in the north of the country. Like many thousands of Israelis young and old, Dror was one of 350,000 reservists deployed almost overnight on the 7th and 8th of October 2023. Our hearts remain broken at the loss of life and the atrocities that were committed against innocent Israelis, and on the impact this war will continue to have on the Bar-Ilan family. Looking back on my six years as the director of BINA, I would like to highlight some of the rewarding experiences and achievements in my term of office. One of my biggest achievements was that I managed to push the idea of nanotech research to the forefront of the university. Bar-Ilan has highly developed faculties of life science, engineering, exact science, and very good departments of physics, and chemistry, and it is this strength that allowed me to focus the direction of our research at BINA during the years that I was at the helm. An immediate concern was to purchase state-of-theart equipment to bolster our research abilities. Our high-resolution microscopes were the first acquired in Israel. With the help of my colleagues, I think we brought in $20 M during these six years for new equipment. My colleague Dr. Yossi Talyosef and I were like a couple in our ability to closely work together toward our goals. And together we are now both moving to the Faculty of Engineering. My second achievement was the establishment of a new department in BINA dedicated to smart material synthesis. This refers to the process of creating smart materials through various techniques and methodologies. Smart material synthesis involves the intricate process of crafting materials with unique capabilities that respond intelligently to external stimuli. These materials exhibit the ability to alter their properties in response to specific triggers such as changes in temperature, pressure, or exposure to light. Essentially, it’s the art and science of creating materials with dynamic functionalities, akin to instilling them with distinct superpowers. Smart material synthesis opens avenues for the development of materials that can autonomously adapt, transforming industries like healthcare, electronics, and aerospace by introducing innovative and responsive components into various applications. This department started three years ago and has already published a few papers. The most successful trend is the focus on bio convergence, which is the intersection between various scientific disciplines and biology. It represents a collaborative effort where fields such as nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and material sciences converge with the biological sciences. Bio convergence is not merely a meeting point; it is a dynamic collaboration that fosters a holistic approach to addressing complex biological challenges by breaking down traditional boundaries between scientific domains. I believed—and still believe—that this is a direction that our university needs to focus on to support the life sciences and make them an integral part of BINA. Before I started my tenure at BINA, I was cautious and concerned by the experience of my predecessor, Prof. Yuval Garini. Yuval was unable to simultaneously lead BINA and published papers. He was sad about that. He told me to expect to sacrifice my own research. But with God’s help, my rate of publications over that time period did not diminish. The grants also seemed to flow in. Twice we received grants from the Israel Science Foundation, the Ministry of Science, Mafat, MAGNET, and many more. Now that I’m stepping down from my position, it’s clear to me that I was only a shaliach tzibur , a messenger of the community, who acted as the anchor of BINA. I was not smarter than anyone else from the staff or the PIs. I did not have more luck than they did. I was not more worthy or talented than “One of my biggest achievements was that I managed to push the idea of nanotech research to the forefront of the university”
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