BGU | PRESIDENT'S REPORT 2026

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BEN-GURION UNIVERSITY OF THE NEGEV

NOTEWORTHY NEWS

Prof. Lior Rokach

Dr. Shimrit Maman

Dr. Shafir Botner

Prof. Anat Milo

EXCELLENCE RECOGNIZED ​ BGU was ranked 52nd in the 2025 global list of the “ most entrepreneurial universities ,” published annually by PitchBook . Prof. Lior Rokach was appointed to the UN’s newly established Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence, the sole Israeli on the 40-person panel. Dr. Shimrit Maman, head of BGU’s Remote Sensing Lab, was appointed Chair of the Israel Space Agency, succeeding Prof. Dan Blumberg, also of BGU. Dr. Shafir Botner of the Dept. of Emergency Medicine was appointed Chief Paramedic of Magen David Adom, Israel’s national emergency medical service. Three BGU faculty members were awarded highly competitive European Research Council ( ERC) Consolidator grants : Professors Klim Efremenko , Anat Milo , and Benjamin Palmer were among just 349 grant recipients worldwide.

Prof. Klim Efremenko

Prof. Benjamin Palmer

​ Prof. Palmer also received the prestigious 2025 Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists in Israel. Dr. Yisroel Mirsky of the Stein Faculty of Computer and Information Science and head of the Offensive AI Research Lab at Cyber@ BGU was awarded an ERC Starting Grant . Profs. Josh Baraban and Nir Schlezinger were awarded ERC Proof of Concept grants.

Prof. Benjamin Palmer

Dr. Yisroel Mirsky