Brains will overflow at Nobel Prize laureate conference in Jerusalem this summer
This is the second world scientific conference that the ministry is organizing with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH The World Science Conference Israel (WSCI) logo(photo credit: Courtesy)
Delegations including up to 20 Nobel Prize laureates and 400 young scientists and thinkers from 60 countries will attend a conference in the capital in August.The five-day event will include most of the Israeli Nobel Prize winners and others from around the world. It will be the largest such event of its kind ever to be held.The World Science Conference Israel is being organized by the Foreign Ministry, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Science, Technology and Space Ministry and the Prime Minister’s Office. Stanford University Prof. Roger Kornberg, the 2006 laureate in Chemistry who studied and worked here and is chairman of the conference’s academic committee, said he hoped the first-ever such conference would launch a tradition of bringing together laureates and younger brilliant scientists from around the globe.Hebrew University president Prof. Menahem Ben-Sasson said HU was proud to take a central part with the Foreign Ministry in the organization of the event. It will be an excellent opportunity to “deepen the positive image of Israel in academia and science and to forge contacts among young people who in the future will lead scientific research in their countries. I am sure that the Israeli spirit of breakthrough thinking, creativity and education that promotes curiosity, asking questions and creating doubts will ‘infect’ the brilliant guests and promote their paths to become leading scientists in their countries,” Ben-Sasson said.This is the second world scientific conference that the ministry is organizing with HU. The first was held in August 2012 and was attended even by scientists from Muslim countries including Turkey, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates. This one was supposed to be held in the capital last August, but it was postponed due to Operation Protective Edge in Gaza.The event will include lectures on the life sciences, mathematics, physics, chemistry and other subjects, and it is hoped that once they return home, the foreign guests will become goodwill ambassadors for Israel.
