BGU | PRESIDENT'S REPORT 2022

WE HAVE CONTINUED WITH OUR GOAL OF ATTRACTING THE BEST AND BRIGHTEST YOUNG RESEARCHERS IN ALL FIELDS AND PROVIDING THEM WITH STATE-OF-THE-ART LABS AND EQUIPMENT SO THAT THEY CAN PERFORM CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH The coronavirus still has us in its grip and continues to affect our community, students and lecturers alike. The roll-out of the vaccines and their high uptake enabled us to bring our students back to campus in the Spring, though many preferred to remain at home and study using our newly installed hybrid classrooms. It was only really with the start of the Autumn term last October that the campus came back to life in a manner resembling pre-corona times. For most of the semester, close to 20,000 students filled the classrooms, corridors, teaching labs, libraries, and cafeterias as we all rediscovered the joys of central elements of academic life that cannot take place online. Omicron has proven to be disruptive and again, it is unclear what the future holds. We know how to do things online, but our students are paying a heavy price and miss out on the more informal, yet crucially important and significant aspects of academia. Coronavirus aside, we have continued with our goal of attracting the best and brightest young researchers in all fields and providing them with state-of-the-art labs PROF. CHAIM HAMES RECTOR

Studying in the Zlotowski Student Center

and equipment so that they can perform cutting-edge research. Our Office for New Academic Faculty provides them with support and aid that gives them peace of mind so that they can concentrate on their research and teaching. We have also revamped our mentoring program for new faculty so that it can be more effective in guiding them as they take their first steps as independent academics. The mentors are handpicked and partake in a course which creates an esprit-de corps that makes the process itself more rewarding for both the mentor and the new researcher. Over the course of this year, we created a new unit in the Rector’s Office, which is devoted to interdisciplinary research and teaching, which will oversee the newly

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Ben-Gurion University of the Negev