Lowy Distinguished Guest Past Professors

Prof. Alex Evilevitch, Lowy Distinguished Guest Professor for the academic year 2023/2024 and 2024/2025, is a professor in the Department of Experimental Medical Science, Faculty of Medicine, Lund University, Lund, Sweden. He holds an M.Sc. (1997) and a Ph.D. (1997) in Physical Chemistry from Lund University, Lund, Sweden. He pursued postdoctoral studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, USA, in the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department (2002-2004). Following his postdoctoral studies, he joined Lund University. Prof. Evilevitch has received several awards among them the Sven och Ebba-Christina Hagberg’s Prize in Biochemistry and Medicine (2008); the Akzo Nobel Nordic Science Prize for the research in Physical Chemistry of Viruses, Sweden (2005); the UCLA Chancellor’s Award for Postdoctoral Research with Exceptional Accomplishments in research (2004); the Hebert Newby McCoy Award (2003); the Karin Kapucinet research scholarship for outstanding students from Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel (1996); and the Berzelius Award in Chemistry from Royal School of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden (1993). Prof. Evilevitch has attracted large research grants (over $7M) including from the Swedish Research Council (VR), the National Science Foundation (NSF, USA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH, USA). He has advised 7 doctoral students who received Ph.D. degrees and supervised 10 postdoctoral fellows and 38 undergraduate projects. He currently leads an international research team consisting of doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows. He is the lead corresponding author of several highly ranked scientific publications in eLife, PNAS, Nature Chemical Biology, Nucleic Acids Research and JACS, to name a few of his 65 peer-reviewed publications. Prof. Evilevitch leads innovative and translational research in herpes- and corona virology, gene therapy as well as the development of antiviral therapeutics that do not lead to the development of resistance. He is the sole inventor of two approved US patents for a pioneering broad-spectrum method for the treatment of all nine human herpesviruses as well as animal herpes (veterinary use), resistant to viral mutations. He is an internationally renowned researcher who conducts research in the boundary area between cell biology, structural biology and biophysics with medical relevance. 

Prof. Helena F. Florindo, Lowy Distinguished Guest Professor for the academic year 2024/2025, is a Professor at the Department of Pharmacy, Pharmacology, and Health Technologies at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Lisbon, Portugal. She holds a Pharm D in Pharmaceutical Sciences (2003), a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutics with a specialization in Nanomedicines, vaccination, immunology (2008), and a Habilitation in Pharmaceutical Technology with a specialization in cancer, nanotechnology, and immunology (2018) from the University of Lisbon, Portugal. Prof. Florindo is the co-founder and CTO of ImmuNovation (2023-present). She serves currently as chair of the Nanomedicine and Nanoscale Delivery Focus Group of the CRS, USA (2023-present). She is also an active member of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR, 2020-present). In addition, Prof. Florindo is a member of the Portuguese Medicines Agency Evaluation Board (INFARMED) and an expert in the European Medicines Agency (EMA), thus supporting the evaluation of marketing authorization procedures for new drugs and biologics. She is a board member of the Lisbon Academic Medical Center, Portugal (2022-present), a member of the European Association for Cancer Research (EACR) and of the Portuguese Association for Cancer Research (2016-present), a member of the Portuguese Veterinary Medicines Evaluation Board (2009-present), and a member of the COVID-19 Vaccination Technical Advisory Group, Ministry of Health, Portuguese Health Directorate, Portugal (2022-present). Prof. Florindo received several awards for her work, among them: the Inspirational Women award, Activa magazine, Portugal (2023); the Gilead Program Award (2022); the International Teacher award from the Tel Aviv University, Israel (2022); the Science award – “Mais Alentejo” magazine, Portugal (2021); she was selected as the Young Investigator of Focus Group CRS Immunology (2020); the Bristol Meyers Squibb Partnering for Cure research award (2015); and the Gilead Program Award (2014). Prof. Florindo has repeatedly received the Excellence in Teaching Award and Research Prizes for exceptional research from the University of Lisbon, and she is actively involved in the training of her multidisciplinary team of 22 researchers, including 4 Postdoctoral fellows, 11 Ph.D. students, 2 MSc and 5 undergraduate students. Prof. Florindo’s innovative research has focused on the basic questions of cancer development and immune evasion, integrating cell biology, polymer chemistry, biomaterial science, nanotechnology, chemical biology, immunology, and computational sciences to discover new molecular and cellular targets with a major role in tumor immune evasion. As a result, her studies have yielded 66 manuscripts, 3 patents, 11 book chapters, and in the last five years, she delivered more than 130 oral communications worldwide (EACR Nanotechnology in Cancer, CRS, NanoBio&Med), 62 of those as invited (e.g. Gordon Cancer Nanotechnology, CRS, World Vaccine Congress Europe 2019). Her scientific achievements have been featured in national TV, journals, online news (Observador, Público), magazines, radio, and in the international press.
 

Prof. Dr. Reinhard Genzel, Lowy Distinguished Guest Professor for the academic year 2024/2025, is the Nobel Prize Laureate in Physics 2020. He is a Director at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, Germany, and a Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society, Munich, Germany. He is a Professor Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, California, USA, where he still serves as a Professor of the Graduate School. He is also an Honorary Professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany. He holds a Diploma in Physics (1975) and a Ph.D. (Dr.rer.nat.) in Physics and Astronomy (1978) under Prof. Peter Mezger, from the University of Bonn, Germany. He is a member of the Academia Europaea (AE), the American Astronomical Society (AAS); the American Physical Society (APS); the European Astronomical Society (EAS); the German Astronomical Society (AG); the German Physical Society (DPG); the International Astronomical Union (IAU); USA Academy of Sciences (NAS); and an Academician Member a at the European Academy of Sciences (EurASC, Honorary Member) and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (PAS, Academician Member). He is also a foreign member of Académie des Sciences (Institut de France); Royal Society, London; the Royal Spanish Academy of Sciences (Real Academia de Ciencias, Foreign Corresponding Member); and the USA Academy of Sciences (NAS). Prof. Dr. Genzel is a Nobel Prize Laureate in Physics, jointly with Andrea Ghez, for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy (2020). For his work, he received numerous other honours and awards, among them: the Harvey Prize in Science and Technology, Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Israel (2014); the Herschel Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (2014); the Great Cross of Merit (with Star) of Germany (2014); the Honorary Doctorate (Dr.h.c.), Paris Observatory OPSPM (2014); the Crafoord Prize in Astronomy (2012); the Tycho Brahe Prize (2012); the Karl Schwarzschild Medal (2011); the Premio Galileo, Fondazione Premio Galileo 2000, Italy (2009); the Shaw Prize of The Shaw Prize Foundation, Hong Kong (2008); the Einstein Medal of the Albert-Einstein-Gesellschaft AEG (Albert Einstein Society), Bern, Switzerland (2007); and more. Prof. Dr. Genzel’s research interests are in experimental astrophysics. His research group is studying the physical processes and the evolution of active galaxies, particularly their central regions. One key issue they have been pursuing is the question whether the accretion onto massive black holes, or star formation powers active and luminous galaxies. They are also engaged in testing the paradigm that active galactic nuclei indeed all contain massive black holes. They also have been developing novel instrumentation, mainly in the infrared and submillimeter range, for large ground-based, airborne and space telescopes. 
 

Prof. Joseph Y. Halpern, Lowy Distinguished Guest Professor for the academic year 2023/2024, is the Joseph C. Ford Chair of Engineering in the Computer Science Department at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA. Prof. Halpern holds a B.Sc. in Mathematics (1975) from the University of Toronto, Canada, and a Ph.D. in Mathematics (1981) from Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. In between, he spent two years as the head of the Mathematics Department at Bawku Secondary School, Ghana. Following graduation, he spent one year as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA (joint appointment, 1981-1982). He then joined the IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, California, USA, as a research staff member (1982-1996), and where he later served as the manager of the Mathematics and Related Computer Science Department (1988-1990). In parallel, he also held positions at Stanford University, California, USA, as visiting industrial professor (1984-1985), consulting assistant professor (1985-1987), consulting associate professor (1987-1991) and consulting full professor (1991-1996). In 1996, Prof. Halpern joined Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA, as co-director of the Cognitive Studies Program and full professor in the Computer Science Department. At Cornell University, he was chair of the Computer Science Department (2010-2014), and has been the Joseph C. Ford Chair of Engineering since 2017. He also served as a visiting professor in Canada, the Netherlands and Israel at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2009-2010, 2018). Prof. Halpern is a fellow of the Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association (2022), the National Academy of Engineering (2019), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2015), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (2012), the Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (2011), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2005), the Association for Computing Machinery (2002) and the American Association of Artificial Intelligence (1993). Prof. Halpern received several awards for his research, among them the Kampé de Feriet Award (2016), the ACM SIGART Autonomous Agents Research Award (2011), the Edsger Dijkstra Prize in Distributed Computing (2009), and the ACM/AAAI Newell Award (2008). Prof. Halpern has coauthored three books ("Reasoning About Knowledge", "Reasoning about Uncertainty", and "Actual Causality"), and over 160 journal publications and 200 conference publications. He was designated a Highly Cited Researcher by the Institute for Scientific Information. He was editor-in-chief of the Journal of the ACM, and served on the editorial boards of Artificial Intelligence and Information and Computation. He currently serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Logic and Computation, Games and Economic Behavior and the Journal of Causal Inference. He started and continues to be the administrator of CoRR, the computer science section of arxiv.org. Prof. Halpern's major research interests are in reasoning about knowledge and uncertainty, qualitative reasoning, causality, belief revision, (fault-tolerant) distributed computation, game theory, decision theory, security, and causality. Together with his former student, Yoram Moses, he pioneered the approach of applying reasoning about knowledge to analyzing distributed protocols and multi-agent systems. He has co-authored five patents. 
 

Prof. Alberto Melloni, Lowy Distinguished Guest Professor for the academic year 2024/2025, is Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy. He holds the UNESCO Chair for Religious Pluralism and Peace at Sapienza University in Rome, Italy, and directs the Foundation for Religious Studies, based at the University of Bologna, Italy (with branches at the University of Palermo and the University of Venice).  He is an internationally acclaimed scholar of Religious Studies and one of the leading scholars in the Humanities in Italy today. He is primarily known for his work on the Church Councils, in particular the Second Vatican Council. His multidisciplinary research has made a notable contribution to the study of theology and religious thought, institutional history, ecumenism, and interfaith relations, as well as to the intertwined religious and political histories of medieval, early modern, modern, and contemporary Italy. A pioneer in the employment of Digital Humanities tools in Religious Studies, Prof. Melloni’s oeuvre to date exceeds 580 publications—including monographs, edited volumes, and articles published in prestigious journals and translated into multiple languages. His unparalleled position in the field of Church History is apparent in his appointment as General Editor of the 13-volume Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Generaliumque Decreta in the Corpus Christianorum series (Brepols), overseeing the preparation of critical editions of all extant documentation pertaining to the councils of the different Christian Churches. Prof. Melloni served for seven years as an advisor to the Italian Minister for Education and University and Research. He is involved in shaping academic policies in the Humanities at the European level, in his role as Chief Scientific Advisor of the European Commission. In addition to founding the European Academy of Religion, which has played a pivotal role in the reinvigoration of the study of religion in recent years, Prof. Melloni also serves as the Dean of the inter-university Italian national Ph.D. program in Religious Studies. He is a member of the Council governing the Institut d'Etude des Religions et de la Laïcité (IREL) at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris, France. Prof. Melloni is a member of the Accademia dei Lincei. For his contributions, he received several distinctions, among them: the senior Italian Order of Merit from the Italian President of the Republic; the Capri Award for History; the Resistenza - Città di Omegna Award; the International Prize Francesco Saverio Nitti for the Mediterranean; the San Nicola Greco Prize; and the Puškin Medal from the Russian Federation.
 

Prof. Dr. Haya Schulmann, Lowy Distinguished Guest Professor for the academic year 2024/2025, is a Professor for Cybersecurity at the Institute of Computer Science of the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. She is also a member of the board of directors at the National Research Center for Applied Cybersecurity ATHENE, Darmstadt and Frankfurt, Germany. She holds a B.A. (2005), M.A. (2009) and Ph.D. (2014) in Computer Science from Bar Ilan University, Israel. Prof. Dr. Schulmann is one of the most renowned and successful cybersecurity researchers in Germany. She received several distinctions for her work, among them: the prestigious LOEWE top professorship (2,1 M. Euro funding, 2022); the German IT Security Award from the Horst Görtz Foundation (2021); the Cisco Research Center Award (2018); the Microsoft Azure Research Awards (2017, 2015); the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft TALENTA Excellence Award for Female Researchers (2015); and the Applied Networking Research Prize from the IETF/IRTF (2015). She was an ICANN Research Fellow (2014, 2013). She is the author of over 60 articles in leading international scientific conferences and journals. To bring the topic of cybersecurity to a wider audience, she also regularly writes articles and columns for the Frankfurter Allgemeine, Zeitung FAZ and Tagesspiegel Background Cybersecurity. She is an associate editor for ACM Computing Surveys and on editorial board of ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security (TOPS). Prof. Dr. Schulmann’s goal is to make the Internet secure. She carries research in all aspects of systems and network security, explore vulnerabilities in the Internet infrastructure and services, and design defenses using tools from various research areas, such as machine learning, program analysis, fuzzing, algorithms.

Prof. Dvira Segal, Lowy Distinguished Guest Professor for the academic year 2024/2025, is a Professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Physics, as well as the Director of the Centre for Quantum Information and Quantum Control (CQIQC), at the University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She graduated from Tel Aviv University, Israel, with a B.Sc. (1998, cum laude) in Chemistry and Computer Science, and a Ph.D. in Chemistry (2004). At the University of Toronto, she also serves as the director of the Centre for Quantum Information and Quantum Control (CQIQC), which includes approximately 30 research groups from physics, chemistry, engineering, math, and computer science. Prof. Segal has won several honours, including the prestigious Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Theoretical Chemistry (2014-2023), the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2010-2012) and the Early Research Award (2010-2015). Prof. Segal has published 150 papers in peer-reviewed journals. Prof. Segal’s research focuses on developing theoretical methods for studying quantum dynamics and transport in complex systems, addressing fundamental and practical problems in nanosystems and quantum-based technologies. She is also a leader in stochastic and quantum thermodynamics, deriving performance bounds and cost-precision tradeoff relations relevant to stochastic quantum and classical thermal machines. Recent works from her group concern modelling quantum thermal machines, exploring bath engineering schemes, and developing simulations for strongly dissipative quantum systems. 

Prof. Sacha Stern, Lowy Distinguished Guest Professor for the academic year 2023/2024, is a Professor of Rabbinic Judaism in the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University College London (UCL), UK. He holds a B.A. in Ancient and Modern History (1986) from the University of Oxford, UK, an M.A. in Ancient History and Social Anthropology from University College London (UCL), UK (1988), and a D.Phil. in Jewish Studies (1992) from Oxford. In 1991, he joined Jews’ College at the University of London, UK, where he served as a lecturer and senior lecturer in Jewish Studies (1991-2002). Then he served as a reader in Jewish Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, UK (2002-2005). Since 2005, he has held the position of Professor of Rabbinic Judaism in the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at UCL, UK, where he also served as head of the Hebrew and Jewish Studies Department (2012 to 2022). Prof. Stern is a fellow of the British Academy. Since 2008, he has been the Principal Investigator of several major research projects funded by the AHRC, the ERC, and several other foundations (with grants of close to £4 million). Prof. Stern is the editor of the Journal of Jewish Studies and of two Brill series. An ancient historian by training, Prof. Stern specializes in late antique and early medieval Jewish history, rabbinic literature, and the history of calendars, time reckoning, and astronomy. He has made a world-leading contribution especially on the Jewish calendar, which he has developed as an entirely new area of research. 
 

Prof. Eitan Tadmor, Lowy Distinguished Guest Professor for the academic year 2024/2025, is a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA, with a joint appointment at the Department of Mathematics and the Institute for Physical Sciences and Technology. Prof. Tadmor earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Tel Aviv University (1979) and began his scientific career as a Bateman Research Instructor in CalTech (1980-1982). He held professorship positions at Tel-Aviv University (1983-1995) and at UCLA (1995-2002), where he was the founding co-director of the NSF Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM, 1999-2001). Between 2016-2017, he was a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Theoretical Studies at ETH- Zürich (ETH-ITS). He also served as the principal investigator of the NSF Focus Research Group Award on “Kinetic Description of Multiscale Phenomena'' (2008-2012), and NSF Research network “Kinetic Description of Emerging Challenges in Natural Sciences'' (Ki-Net) (2012-2020). Prof. Tadmor was awarded the 2015 SIAM-ETH Peter Henrici Prize in Applied Mathematics, and the 2022 AMS-SIAM Norbert Wiener Prize in Applied Mathematics. He is an AMS Fellow, SIAM Fellow, and a member of Academia Europaea and the European Academy of Science (2022). Prof. Tadmor published 200 research papers and was listed on the ISI Highly Cited Researchers in Mathematics. His primary research interests focus on the interplay between analytical theories and computational aspects of time-dependent problems, with applications to shock waves, kinetic transport, incompressible flows, image processing and self-organized dynamics.

 Prof. Joshua Trachtenberg, Lowy Distinguished Guest Professor for the academic year 2024/2025, is a Professor of Neurobiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, California, USA. He holds a B.A. in Biology (1990) from Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, USA, and a Ph.D. in Physiology (1997) from the University of Texas, Austin, Texas, USA. Prof. Trachtenberg received several awards for his work, among them: he was elected Horace W. Magoun Distinguished Lecturer (2022) and UCLA Neuroscience Undergraduate Society Professor of the Year (2010,2012). He was an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow (2005-2007) and an Esther A. & Joseph Klingenstein Foundation Fellow (2004-2007). He was awarded the Frontiers of Science – Faculty Development Award (2004) and the National Research Service Award (1997-2000). Prof. Trachtenberg’s research focuses on understanding how our earliest experiences inform the structure and function of cortical circuitry during so-called critical periods. To address this question, he uses as a model system the mouse primary visual cortex. His work pioneered the field of longitudinal in vivo imaging in cortex, and his approach is now in routine use in many dozens of laboratories around the world.  
 

Prof. Astrid von Busekist, Lowy Distinguished Guest Professor for the academic year 2024/2025, is a Professor of Political Theory and the Head of the Political Theory Program at the graduate school at Sciences Po, Paris, France. She is also the editor of the journal of political theory Raisons Politiques. She holds a B.A.in History, Information and Communication, and Modern Literature, an M.A. in Modern Literature from the University Paris Sorbonne, France, and a Ph.D. in Political Science (1996) from the University Paris Dauphine, France. She is the editor of the journal of political theory Raisons Politiques published under the umbrella of the Sciences Po. Prof. Von Busekist mainly works on democracy and justice, compromises between states and religious communities, the ethics of language policies, and boundary politics.

Prof. Dr. Michael Waidner, Lowy Distinguished Guest Professor for the academic year 2024/2025, is a Professor of Computer Science and Chair for Security in Information Technology, at the Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany. He is also the Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology (SIT), Darmstadt, Germany, where he also serves as the Founding Director (CEO) of the National Research Center for Applied Cybersecurity ATHENE. He holds a Diploma (1986) and a Doctorate (1991) in Computer Science from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany. Until his move to TU Darmstadt, Prof. Dr. Waidner was an IBM Distinguished Engineer and Chief Technology Officer for Cybersecurity, chair of the IBM Security Architecture Board and responsible for the company's technical strategy in cybersecurity. Prof. Dr. Waidner is a member of the German Academy of Science and Engineering acatech (2020), a distinguished scientist of the Association for Computing Machinery ACM (2008), a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers IEEE (2004) and a member of various advisory boards for industry and government. He received several awards, among them: the IBM Cyber Security Faculty Award for “Security by Design Lab” (2013) and the Google Faculty Research Award for “Studying Interactional Privacy in OSNs With an In Situ” (2013). Prof. Dr. Waidner is an inventor of 25 patents and an author of over 160 articles in scientific conferences and journals. He also regularly writes articles for a broader audience, e.g., for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and for Tagesspiegel Background. Since the beginning of 2024, he has been the Editor-in-Chief of the ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security, one of the leading journals in the field of cybersecurity.