$$News and Reports$$

Aug. 10, 2020

Dr. Michal Segoli (pictured below), a member of the Marco and Louise Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology (MDDE) in the Swiss Institute for Dryland Environmental & Energy Research at the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research (BIDR), is part of a research team that has been awarded funding from the prestigious Israel Institute for Advanced Studies (IIAS).
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The IIAS is Israel's primary institution for facilitating outstanding collaborative academic research. Its mission is to create multidisciplinary learning communities of academics from around the world who engage in joint research projects. The IIAS contributes to the interchange of knowledge and the vitality of academic life in Israel and around the globe.

The IIAS has awarded a fellowship to a research group comprising Michal Segoli (Ben-Gurion University, Israel), Tamar Keasar (University of Haifa, Israel), Eric Wajnberg (INRAE, Sophia Antipolis, France) and new world-leading scientists in the field to study the following topic: "Mathematical modeling of biological control interaction to support agriculture and conservation."

The IIAS will support this research group for a five-month stay in Jerusalem, Israel, from February 1, 2022, to June 30, 2022. The members of the study group span the continuum between theoretical approaches (behavioral, population, and community ecology) and applied methods (biological control of crop pests). The group includes both mathematical biologists and experimentalists interested in developing biological control theory and practices through close collaborations.

Group activities will include: 

  1. ​Publishing original research works aimed at theory-driven optimized biological control practices.
  2. Supervising graduate students and post-doctoral fellows.
  3. Holding discussions with private companies involved in producing pests' natural enemies and developing biological control activities.
  4. Organizing workshops and seminars.
  5. Organizing one international conference and other scientific events.
  6. Publishing specialized issue journals and/or a book.