Tel Aviv University (TAU) Professor Ehud Gazit has been selected as the International Solvay Chair in Chemistry for 2023. He is the first Israeli to receive this annual appointment and the first scientist to be appointed to the position outside of the United States and Europe.

The Solvay International Institute was founded in Belgium about a century ago and is designed to develop and support creative and groundbreaking research in physics, chemistry, and related fields, in order to increase and deepen the understanding of natural phenomena. The Institute organizes annual conferences on physics and chemistry, as well as international workshops for the training of doctoral students and selected topics. The Chair has been won by 15 of the world’s top scientists, including three Nobel laureates in chemistry, the Wolf Prize winner, and laureates of other prestigious awards.

As part of his new appointment, Professor Gazit will spend a month or two in Brussels, the capital of Belgium, during which he will give lectures on his field of research.

Professor Gazit is a biophysicist, biochemist, and nanotechnologist associated with TAU’s Shmunis School of Biomedicine and Cancer Research at the Wise Faculty of Life Sciences and the Department of Materials Science at the Fleischman Faculty of Engineering. His main area of expertise is “Solid State Biology,” an innovative field of study that combines disciplines from physics, chemistry, synthetic and structural biology, and materials engineering.  He is a world-renowned expert in nanotechnology and biological chemistry and a highly cited researcher who has published more than 350 scientific articles and the inventor of more than 100 patents.

Previously, Professor Gazit served as Vice President for Research and Development of TAU, as the Chairman of Ramot, the University’s technology transfer company, and as the Chief Scientist of Israel’s Ministry of Science and Technology.

Over the years, Professor Gazit has won a number of prestigious awards and prizes in Israel and around the world, including the Kadar Prize for research excellence, the Landau Prize in Science and Arts, and the Rapaport Prize for Excellence in Biomedical Research. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in the UK, a Foreign Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences in India, and a Member of the European Organization for Molecular Biology. 

“I thank the Solvay Institute for selecting me, a great honor and excitement for me,” Professor Gazit says. “It is a great privilege for me to join such a prestigious and impressive list of leading researchers. Today I am reminded of the former President of Israel, Professor Ephraim Katzir, one of Israel’s greatest scientists, and of whom I am one of his academic ‘great grandchildren’ and who organized the Solvay Institute’s Chemistry Conference about 40 years ago. Apart from the personal honor, I am happy and proud to represent TAU and the State of Israel in this appointment.”