TAU Honorary Doctorates 2018

At a ceremony that will take place on May 3rd, as part of the Board of Governors series of events, Tel Aviv University will grant honorary doctorates to a group of groundbreaking researchers and inspiring philanthropists from all over the world.

 

Among those who will receive honorary doctorates:

 

Dr. Karnit Flug has been Governor of the Bank of Israel since October 2013, after previously serving as Deputy Governor and Director of the Bank of Israel’s Research Department. She was born in Poland and made Aliyah with her parents at age three. Dr. Flug earned an MA in Economics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a PhD in Economics from Columbia University in the US. She joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1984 and the Research Department of the Bank of Israel in 1988. From 1994 to 1996, Dr. Flug was a Senior Economist at the Inter-American Development Bank before returning to Israel in 1997. She has been ranked among the top 10 central bankers in the world by Global Finance magazine.

Jack Ma is lead founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group. He is a member of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum, an advocate of UN Sustainable Development Goals and special adviser to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development for Youth Entrepreneurship and Small Business. Ma graduated from Hangzhou Teacher's Institute with a major in English language education. Having spent six years as a teacher, he is strongly influenced by his past career. In his view, CEO means “Chief Education Officer.” In 1995, Ma founded China’s first online business directory, China Pages, and in 1999, he led a team to establish Alibaba.com with the goal of helping small businesses. Alibaba Group now serves tens of millions of small businesses and entrepreneurs around the globe through e-commerce, online financial services, cloud computing and smart logistics. Ma set up the Jack Ma Foundation, which focuses on philanthropic initiatives in the areas of education, environmental protection, poverty alleviation and entrepreneurship.

Ilana Dayan-Orbach is an Israeli TV journalist who has, since 1993, anchored the award-winning, weekly investigative-news program Uvda (“Fact”). A TAU law alumna and member of the Israeli Bar Association, Dayan-Orbach holds an LLM and JSD from Yale Law School and is a former Fulbright Fellow. She began her journalistic career as a radio correspondent for IDF Radio in 1982, and has hosted a weekly current affairs program there since 1997. Her TV career began as the first-ever female news anchor for the daily TV interview program, “New Evening,” in 1987. Dayan-Orbach has lectured at TAU’s Buchmann Faculty of Law since 1993, where she teaches a course on freedom of speech. She was born in Argentina and moved to Israel with her family at age six.

Dmitry Zimin is a professor of engineering at the State University – Higher School of Economics in Moscow. He holds a PhD in technical sciences from the Moscow Aviation Institute and, for over 35 years, held various leadership roles at the military-industrial Mintz Radio Technical Institute. Zimin is the former CEO and current Honorary President of mobile telecommunications company VimpelCom. For his extensive charitable endeavors, Zimin became the first Russian philanthropist to be awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy in 2013. At Tel Aviv University, he recently established the Zimin Institute for Engineering Solutions Advancing Better Lives and previously launched a project at the Buchmann Faculty of Law in support of Israeli-Russian student exchange and the study of Russian law.

 

Dr. Luis Alberto Lacalle de Herrera was President of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay between 1990 and 1995. A former journalist and a graduate of the Law School of the University of the Republic, he served as member of parliament from 1971 until the 1973 military coup when

parliament was dissolved. After democracy was restored in 1984, Lacalle was elected Senator and later Vice President of the Senate. Over the years, he has actively spoken out and published in defense of the State of Israel. He is a founder and member of the Friends of Israel Initiative – a group of high-level individuals who promote Israel’s right to exist within secure borders and counteract the growing efforts to delegitimize it. He has received a string of prestigious accolades, among them a knighthood from the Queen of England, the Jerusalem Prize and national medals from Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Spain.

Born in Budapest in 1948, László Lovász is a mathematician best known for his work in combinatorics, graph theory and theoretical computer science. A math prodigy already in high school, he won gold medals in the International Mathematical Olympiad for three years running (1964-1966) and published his first scientific paper when he was just 17. Lovász is a member of the Department of Computer Science at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, and former director of its Mathematical Institute. He has been a visiting professor at leading institutions

including Yale, Princeton, Cornell and Berkeley, and a senior researcher at the Microsoft Research Center, Redmond. Among numerous awards and high honors, Lovász holds the Wolf Prize and the Kyoto Prize, and served as President of the International Mathematical Union between 2007-2010. He has published 4 textbooks and over 300 scientific papers.

Physicist Prof. Knut Urban gained his PhD from the University of Stuttgart in 1972 and subsequently joined the Max Planck Institute of Metals Research. He served as Director of the Institute of Microstructure Research at Jülich Research Center, one of the largest interdisciplinary research centers in Europe, from 1987 to 2010. He was also one of two founding directors of the Ernst Ruska Center for Microscopy and Spectroscopy with Electrons in 2004. Prof. Urban is former president of the German Physical Society and a current member of several advisory bodies, boards of trustees and scientific committees. His prestigious research awards include the MRS von Hippel Award, the HONDA Prize for Ecotechnology, and the Wolf Prize in Physics. He is the Yuval Neeman Distinguished Lecturer at Tel Aviv University.

Batsheva Dance Company is one of the world’s foremost contemporary dance companies. It was founded in 1964 by the Baroness Batsheva de Rothschild, who engaged Martha Graham as the first Artistic Advisor. Together with the Young Ensemble, Batsheva comprises 40 dancers

drawn from Israel and abroad. It gives over 250 performances to 100,000 spectators in Israel and abroad annually. Ohad Naharin, hailed as one of the world's leading contemporary choreographers, assumed the role of Artistic Director in 1990, propelling the company into a new era with his adventurous curatorial vision and distinctive choreographic voice. Naharin is also the originator of the movement language Gaga, which has revolutionized the company’s training and emerged as a growing international force in the larger field of movement practices.

Born in Paris in 1939, Lili Peyser-Racine is an Israeli philanthropist, TAU Governor and an active member of the World WIZO leadership. Lili and her family fled to the south of France during the Nazi occupation; her parents joined the Jewish underground, forged documents and

smuggled Jewish children into Switzerland. In 1952 the family immigrated to Israel where Lili’s father established the Delek oil company. In the 1990s, Lili and her sister took over management of the family charity established by their father. Lili joined TAU’s Israeli Friends Association and has since supported numerous projects advancing needy students, young researchers, lab equipment and, most recently, the Entrance Plaza at the TAU Botanic Garden. Lili is a committee member of the Knesset Speakers` Quality of Life Prize and the Azrieli College in Jerusalem.