Dr. Taleb Mokari, a senior lecturer at BGU's Department of Chemistry and a member of the Ilse Katz Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology, has been appointed as a member of the “Young Academia” of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He was informed by Prof. Ruth Arnon, President of the Academy.
"The establishment of the ‘Young Academia’," noted Prof. Arnon "is a general trend that is growing worldwide. Younger Academy members will be scholars in the humanities and natural sciences who are Israeli residents aged up to 54 years and who have demonstrated excellence in research and original thinking, have won prestigious awards for their research or who have had received a research grant from the Israel Science Foundation. The aim is to promote the status of the young scientist in Israel, to promote the ties between science and policy-makers, to promoting the relationship between science and society, to promote communication and cooperation between young scholars from different disciplines and to create joint research and cooperation with young researchers around the world."
Mokari received a Bachelor's degree in 2000, a M.Sc. in Physical Chemistry in 2002 and a Ph.D. 2006 from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem under the supervision of Uri Banin; his thesis was awarded summa cum laude. He was a Fulbright and an Ilan Ramon postdoctoral fellow with Peidong Yang at the University of California, Berkeley for one year, and joined the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as a staff scientist in 2007. He joined the Department of Chemistry and the Ilse Katz Institute for Nanoscience and at BGU in 2009. His research focuses on the chemical and physical properties of inorganic nanostructures. His group specializes on synthesizing nanostructures, investigating their fundamental physical and chemical properties, and studying their potential applications for renewable energy.
He has received the Chorofas Award (2004), the Eshkol Scholarship from the Ministry of Science, Israel (2005-2007), the Intel-Dean Prize (2005), the Kaye Award for Innovation (2005), the Israel Chemical Society Award (2006), the Schlomiuk Prize for Outstanding Ph.D. Thesis (2007), the Fulbright Fellowship for Postdoctoral Studies (2006-2007), Ilan Ramon Fellowship for the best Fulbright Fellow (2007), the IUPAC Prize for Young Chemists (2006), Dean's honors for excellent researcher from the Faculty of Natural Sciences at BGU (2010), and a Ma’of Fellowship established by the Kahanoff Foundation (2011).
