Northwestern, Tel Aviv Universities forge new ties in first joint workshop

Building on and strengthening close scientific and engineering partnerships, the Iby and Aladar Fleischman Faculty of Engineering of Tel Aviv University (TAU) and the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science of Northwestern University (NU) held their first interdisciplinary workshop at TAU on February 22-25, 2015. The workshop, which focused on semiconductors, electronic materials, thin films, and photonic materials, was part of a broader long-term initiative between the recently founded Department of Materials Science and Engineering at TAU and its NU counterpart.

TAU President Prof. Joseph Klafter and NU President Prof. Morton O. Schapiro enthusiastically endorsed the initiative at a gathering hosted by the Honorable Roey Gilad, Consul General of Israel to the Midwest, in Chicago last week. The February conference had drawn internationally acclaimed experimentalists, computational materials scientists, and theoreticians from both universities. There were lively debates regarding new applications for the high-technology, nanotechnology, energy, biomedical, information, communication, and defense industries.

The workshop, organized by Prof. Noam Eliaz of TAU and Prof. David N. Seidman of NU, consisted of scientific presentations, tutorials, poster presentations by graduate and postdoctoral students, and a guided tour of Jerusalem. "With just 15 professors from NU and 17 professors from TAU, it was possible to produce exciting and dynamic interactions," said Prof. Eliaz. "This workshop demonstrated the strong engineering and scientific research programs at TAU and will trigger more scientific collaborations between the universities."

A second workshop has been scheduled for 2016 and will be held at Northwestern University.

The workshop was supported by The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the Israel Department of Defense, the Pazy foundation, and the Israel Ministry of Science, Technology and Space, in addition to generous funding from both universities.

Provided by Tel Aviv University