Amnon Frenkel (Technion) - Engineering, Technology and Planning

Professor Amnon Frenkel hold the Joseph Meyerhoff Chair in Urban and Regional Planning is Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies at the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning. His research interests are in the field of regional and planning; urban spatial dynamics, and regional aspect of technology diffusion. He established the Spatial Capital Resources Lab at the Center for Urban and Regional Studies, Technion with the aim to provide decision makers with tools and first tier quality data necessary making the best decisions for planning and development. Secondly, to provide decision makers with dynamic management tools based on objectively verifiable quantitative indicators, thus allowing measure and track long term accomplishments of the authorities as well as significant trends which are affecting the character of development in the various communities. In this context he investigates the variables that are likely to affect urban / community resilience, such as local economic capital, organizational capital of the municipality, etc.

Itay Fishhendler (Hebrew University) – Public Policy; Environment

Professor Itay Fishhendler heads the Environmental and Planning Program at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research interests focus on decision-making under conditions of political and environmental uncertainties. He has published over  then 40 articles in leading public policy, conflict resolution, peace studies, geography, ecological economics, and environmental journals. Itay is now engaged in research related to the politics of energy  and water infrastructure. Many of Itay’s studies take a critical approach, often by the use of discourse analysis and content analysis, of planning and building protocols of national infrastructure, such as energy and water.

Eran Feitelson (Hebrew University) - Institutional Coordinator Hebrew University,  Environment, Group head; Public Policy Group head

Eran Feitelson is a Professor at the Department of Geography of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  He is the founder of the Advanced School for Environmental Studies.  He was previously head of the Federmann School for Public Policy and Government (2004-9) and chair of the Department of Geography (2003-4).  He holds an MA in geography and economics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Ph.D from the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University.  He has published over 100 articles in refereed journals and edited volumes on water policy issues, transport policy, environmental policy, and planning.  His research focused on trans-boundary water issues in the Israeli-Arab context, transport and environment policies and land and planning policies and politics.  Recently he has worked on the political and economic facets of large scale seawater desalination, on the definitions of water needs, on the formulation of policy packages, equity facets of transport, earthquake preparedness, and the politics of land and land use planning in Israel.  In the context of earthquake preparedness he led a team that advanced policy packages for residential retrofitting in areas where property values are low, and thus TAMA 38 does not apply.  Following this study he participated in a team that assessed earthquake preparedness in Israel.  Currently he is leading a team that is analyzing the suitability of the different retrofitting policy packages to different municipalities in Israel.  In addition to his academic work Eran Feitelson has participated in several national planning teams in Israel and has been a member of many national committees. He is also the head of the National Parks and Nature Reserves Commission for the last three years, having chaired it for ten years (1999-2009).  He was a Visiting Senior Researcher at Center for Urban Policy and the Environment, Indiana University (1997/8), a non-resident Visiting Fellow at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas (2007-11) and a Visiting Professor in the School of Geography and Environment at the University of Oxford (2009-10).  Eran Feitelson has supervised the PhD dissertations of more than 20 students and the masters theses of some 30 students, on a wide variety of topics. These included vulnerability to climate changes, climate change adaptation, policy change, coastal management, land use planning and management and open space issues.

Moshe Farchi (Tel Hai Academic College) – Welfare and Social Work

Moshe Farchi, PhD. is a Senior Lecturer at the Social Work Department in Tel-Hai Academic College under which he founded and currently the head of the Stress, Trauma & Resilience Studies Program. He is an expert in the fields of acute trauma, emergency mental health intervention, Psychological First Aid (PFA) and psychological inoculation, among other fields associated with PFA protocols.  Dr. Farchi has also conducted extensive research into the fields of resilience empowerment and trauma symptoms reductions, primarily during the acute stage of trauma (ASR-ASD).

Dr. Farchi is the Founder and Leader of the SIX Cs model for resilience derived from empirical academic knowledge and lessons learned by Israel’s Home Front Command, EMS, and other emergency response units. The SIX C's model has been recognized and approved by the Israeli Ministry of Health as the national psychological first aid model.  To date, this approach has been adopted and successfully utilized by the Ministries of Education, Health, and Internal Security in Israel, Israel traffic police, as well as by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as the main model for immediate assistance in stressful and emergency situations. 

Dr. Farchi is a lieutenant colonel in the Home Front Command of the Israel Defence Force,  and in charge of planning & implementing  the emergency interventions protocols . Dr. Farchi led trauma relief efforts during Operation Cast Lead (2009), Operation Pillar of Defence (2012) and Operational Protective Edge (2014).  He was also the head of several humanitarian psych-social delegations to Sri Lanka, Georgia and Haiti on behalf of the Israel Defence Force Home Front Command. Dr. Farchi has successfully published several innovative articles and book chapters in recent years on topics related to trauma intervention in the acute phase.  He has also attended over 30 conferences in countries throughout the world.

Niva Elkin-Koren (University of Haifa) - Law

Niva Elkin-Koren is a Professor of Law at the University of Haifa, Faculty of Law and a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University. She is the Founding Director of the Haifa Center for Law & Technology (HCLT), a Co-Director of the Center for Cyber, Law and Policy and the former Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Haifa. Her research focuses on addressing cyber security challenges, and more specifically on incorporating accountability and legal oversight into digital governance systems, of algorithmic decision-making and AI.

Jonathan Dubnov (Ministry of Health, University of Haifa) – Public Health and Emergency Medicine

Jonathan Dubnov is currently senior lecturer,  Deputy Chief Regional Physician, Haifa Region. Main activities: Participation in health impact assessment for different environmental pollutant sources and industrial projects on the local and on the Israeli National level. Participation in policy decision making process on the Israeli National level and on the European Region. Israeli representative in WHO Task Force on Health Effects of Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution. Research activities accent on air pollution exposure, children respiratory health, cancer morbidity, etc.

Noga Collins-Kreiner (University of Haifa) – Social Science

Noga Collins-Kreiner is a Professor (PhD), in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Haifa, Israel. Her main research interests are: Tourism Development and Management, Tourism, Religion and Conflicts, Tourism and Politics, Tourism and Terrorism.

Miri Cohen (University of Haifa) – Welfare and Social Work

Miri Cohen, Ph.D. is Professor and the head of the School of Social Work, Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Sciences, University of Haifa.  Received BSW in Social Work from Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel in 1973 and  MSW from Haifa University in 1986. Received her PhD in 2000 from the Faculty of Medicine, the Technion, Israel in the area of psycho-neuro-immunology. Between the years  2006- March 2012  she served as the head of the Gerontology Department.

Miri is the president of  the Israel Psycho-Oncology Society,  a board member of the Israeli Oncology Council, a board member of the Journals Psycho-Oncology and The journal of Research in Social Work Practice and a former Associate Editor of Quality of Life Research.

Her main area of research is coping with stress and trauma. This includes the study of coping and adjustment to various acute and chronic stressors, such as life-threatening illness, terror attacks and war, accidents, older people coping with the early trauma of the Holocaust. In these studies she focuses on the multicultural aspects of coping as well as physiological markers of stress (e.g., immune functions, inflammation, heart rate variability). A related topic of her research is the functioning of hospital social workers in emergency, including preparedness of social workers in hospitals, family support and victim identification in mass casualty terrorist attacks, compassion fatigue and burnout in hospital social workers.

Miri Cohen published more than ninety papers in refereed journals and several books and chapters in edited books. Many of her papers have been published in leading journals such as Journal of Trauma and Stress, Cancer, Breast Cancer Research and Therapy, International Journal of cancer, Psycho-Oncology, Journal of the Geriatric American Association, Gerontologist.

Amichai Cohen (Israel Democracy Institute, and Ono Academic College) - Law

Amichai Cohen is a Senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, and a Professor of Law at the Ono Academic College- Faculty of Law. He hold an LL.B. (Magna Cum Laude) from the Hebrew University (1998) and an LL.M. (2001) and J.S.D. (2003) degrees from the Yale Law School. He was a visiting professor at the Columbia Law School, and American University, and a visiting Researcher at the Lauterpacht centre for international law in Cambridge University.

Amichai Cohen is an expert in International Humanitarian law and Israeli National Security Law. In his writings he dealt extensively with the application of emergency norms in the Israeli legal system, including in areas of security and economics, and with the ways in which the Israeli Supreme Court dealt with emergency norms.

Shaul Chorev  (University of Haifa) - Social Science

Shaul Chorev is a retired Israeli Navy Rear Admiral and a Professor in the International Relations division of the School of Political Science, University of Haifa. He is also the Director of the Haifa Research Center for Maritime Policy & Strategy and the Reuven Chaikin Chair in Geostrategy. Chorev lectures on maritime strategy and Israel defense policy, international security and arms control technology transfer, and innovation system in the defense laboratories. From 2007 to 2015, he served as the Head of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission. Chorev has also held numerous senior positions in the Israeli defense establishment, including: Assistant to the Minister of Defense for Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense; Deputy Chief of Naval Operations; Commanding Officer of the Haifa Naval Base; and Commanding Officer of an Israeli Naval Flotilla (missile boats & submarines). He was the project manager of the Dolphin Submarines Project in the German Shipyards (HDW & TNSW) between 1989 and 1992. Chorev holds a BA in Economics and Political Sciences from Bar Ilan University (1985), an MSc. from the United States Naval Postgraduate School (1989), and a Ph.D. from Bar Ilan University in Science Technology and Society (2005).