Established in 2010, the Braginsky Center for the Interface between Science and the Humanities supports research and activities that bridge the gap between the study of nature and the advancement of the human spirit. Its broad mandate is to promote the creation of new tools and methods for understanding our world, and humanity's place within it.
Two of the ongoing initiatives the Braginsky Center is supporting are a yearly event titled “The Poetry of Science,” and the "Braginsky Lectures" series. The poetry competition (Shirat Ha-mada, in Hebrew) was established in memory of Prof. Ofer Lider, a scientist and a poet who worked in the Department of Immunology until he passed away in 2004. The Braginsky Lectures is a series of talks on a wide variety of topics related to the philosophy and history of science.
Director
Yitzhak (Tzachi) Pilpel heads the Department of Molecular Genetics and holds the Ben May Professorial Chair. He studies genetic regulatory networks and their evolution. Focusing on the process by which genes are translated into proteins, and interested in the "grammar" of the genome, Prof. Pilpel employs experimental techniques of directed evolution to study how gene expression networks change in response to environmental conditions. A member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), Prof. Pilpel also heads the review panel of the European Research Council advanced grant on genetics, genomics, bioinformatics and systems biology. He is the recipient of the Bruno Award and the IBM Faculty Award.