People

Prof. Anat Ben-David - OMILab founder

Prof. Anat Ben-David is an Associate Professor at the department of Sociology, Political Science and Communication. Focusing on New Media, her primary research interests are history and geopolitics of the Web, Digital STS, social and political studies of social media, and digital and computational methods for Web research. f. Anat Ben-David is a senior lecturer in the department of Sociology, Political Science and Communication. Focusing on New Media, her primary research interests are history and geopolitics of the Web, Digital STS, social and political studies of social media, and digital and computational methods for Web research.

Prof. Anat Ben-David

Dr. Elishai Ezra-Tsur

Dr. Elishai Ezra-Tsur is an Assistant Professor at Open University of Israel. Director in NBEL research and NBEL Innovation Workshops (NBEL-lab.com). In his research, Elishai study the realm of brain-inspired machines. He utilizes artificial brains to develop new frameworks for robotics and vision processing. Elishai is also the founding director of NBEL Innovation Workshops at Biohouse, Hadassah Medical Center - a design and engineering company which integrates computer-aided design, electrical and software engineering to develop novel medical solutions. Elishai is an academic consultant at the Weizmann Institute of Science for Computational Neuroscience and a university lecturer for artificial intelligence, mathematical modelling, software engineering and computational biology. He is a graduate of Singularity University (2012, NASA Ames Research Center, California), INK fellow (2013, India), INK Trailblazer (2014, USA), Aeroli.to speaker (2016, Brazil), and Dean fellow for Neuroscience (2018, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel). Elishai Holds degrees in Life sciences (B.Sc), Philosophy and History (B.A), Computer Science (M.Sc), Bioengineering (M.Sc, PhD) and Computational Neuroscience (Post Doc).

Elishai Ezra-Tsur

Prof. Yoram Kalman

Prof. Yoram kalman is an Associate professor at the Department of Management and Economics at the Open University. He is currently the Head of OMILab. His research interests are at the intersection of computer-mediated communication (CMC), human-computer interaction (HCI) and information systems (IS). He is interested in the influence of digital technologies on individuals, organizations and society. His academic homepage is at www.kalmans.com

Prof. Yoram-Kalman

Dr. Anat Lerner

Dr. Anat Lerner is a senior faculty member at the Mathematics and Computer Science Department, The Open University of Israel.

Dr. Anat Lerner

Dr. Nurit Melnik

Dr. Nurit Melnik is a linguist and a senior faculty member at the Department of Literature, Language and Arts at the Open University of Israel. Her studies focus on diverse topics: grammar engineering, constructions and the relationship between form and meaning, agreement variations in Modern Hebrew, lexical and syntactic flexibility and "frozen" expressions, and the cognitive aspects behind language change. Her work is situated at the intersection of theoretical linguistics, computational linguistics and corpus linguistics.

Dr. Nurit Melnik

Prof. Adia Mendelson-Maoz

Adia Mendelson-Maoz is an Associate professor in Israeli literature and culture at the Department of Literature, Language and Arts at the Open University of Israel. She investigates the multifaceted relationships between literature, ethics, politics, and culture, mainly in the context of Hebrew Literature and Israeli culture. Mendelson-Maoz current research project, with Avi Shmidman, Bar Ilan University, applies methods from Digital Humanities to the study of Hebrew Literature historiography. The project "Computational Stylistic Profiles for the Analysis of Modern Hebrew Prose" won the Israel Ministry of Science grant for Digital Humanities in 2020.

Prof. Adia Mendelson-Maoz

Prof. Ophir Münz-Manor

Prof. Ophir Münz-Manor, an Associate professor at the Department of History, Philosophy and Judaic Studies, The Open University of Israel. His research focuses on the Rabbinic Culture, Jewish liturgy and liturgical poetry from Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. His studies focus on the intersections with contemporary Christian texts as well as questions of ritual, performance and gender in late antique Near Eastern cultures. In recent years Prof. Münz-Manor has embarked on several projects that combine traditional literary analysis with quantitative and computerized methods from the realm of Digital Humanities.

Prof. Ophir Münz-Manor

Dr. Gadi Sagiv

Prof. Sagiv is an Associate professor at the Department of History, Philosophy and Judaic Studies, The Open University of Israel. His main research interests are: Hasidism; History of Jews in Eastern Europe; Modern Jewish History and Thought; Kabbalah; Religious Studies; Mysticism; Ritual Studies; Religious Movements.

Dr. Gadi Sagiv

Prof. Avriel Bar-Levav

Prof. Bar-Levav is an Associate Professor at the Department of History, Philosophy and Judaic Studies at the Open University of Israel. His research interest are Jewish mysticism, Magic, Jewish ethical literature, Jewish ritual, and Jewish Broadsheets.

Prof. Avriel Bar-Levav

Dr. Vered Silber-Varod - Director of OMILab

Director of the Open Media and Information Lab (OMILab), The Open University of Israel. Former Research Fellow at The Research Center for Innovation in Learning Technologies, The Open University of Israel. Research interests and publications focus on various aspects of speech sciences, with expertise in speech prosody, acoustic phonetics, and speech and text analytics.

Dr. Vered Silber-Varod

Prof. Oren Soffer - OMILab founder

Prof. Oren Sofer (1971-2020). Oren was one of the founders of OMILab, a member of OMILab's management team, and a leading researcher at OMILab. Oren's areas of research were media theory, media history, and digital communication. In recent years, he analyzed 19th century Jewish press using digital tools. His research bridged separate historical eras, diverse methodological approaches and a variety of disciplines. Oren was a a true visionary, and OMILab realizes one of his visions, that of exposing students in the social sciences to the most up-to-date digital research tools. Oren will be missed by us, OMILab's team, as a researcher, a manager, and especially as a colleague. We will continue Oren's work in multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research and in strengthening the connection between research and teaching at the Open University.

In Memoriam of Prof. Oren Soffer

Dr. Sinai Rusinek - Research fellow

Dr. Sinai Rusinek teaches Digital Humanities courses at Bar-Ilan University and at the University of Haifa, and is coordinator of the project DESIR/DARIAH for Haifa University Library.

In 2016 and 2017 she won the Pelagios resource development grant for the project “Kima: Towards a Hebrew Historical Gazetteer”. In 2018 she won a grant from the Rotschild Europe foundation for her project DIJEST: Digitizing Jewish Studies.

In recent years Sinai has been active in promoting Digital Humanities in Israel as well as internationally: she served on the management committee member of COST Action IS1310 Reassembling the Republic of Letters, on the interim executive council of CENTERNET, the international network of digital humanities centers, and on the program committee of DH2018.

Dr. Sinai Rusinek

Dr. Zef Segal - Research fellow

Dr. Zef Segal is an adjunct lecturer at the Department of History and the Department of Mathematics at the Open University of Israel. His research interests and publications focus on the history of cartography, the history of communication, and their effects, as well as dependence, on public spatial and political perceptions, especially in the long 19th century.

Dr. Zef Segal

Dr. Daria Vasyutinsky Shapira

Dr. Daria Vasyutinsky Shapira is a Ph.D. in Jewish Thought (2018, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev), and a former postdoctoral researcher at the Visual Media Lab at the department of CS at Ben-Gurion University (digital Hebrew paleography). She co-led the project for the automatic recognition of types and modes of the medieval Hebrew script. Currently, Daria is a postdoctoral researcher under the supervision of Prof. Ophir Münz-Manor. In collaboration with the Visual Media Lab, she works to develop algorithms for the automatic dating of Hebrew piyyutim from the Genizah. Daria's areas of interest include digital paleography, machine learning, Hebrew paleography and codicology, Jewish epigraphy, digital epigraphy, Karaitica, and Judeo-Arabic studies.

Dr. Daria Vasyutinsky Shapira

Dr. Hanna Gentili

Dr. Hanna Gentili (Ph.D. Warburg Institute 2021) is a Research Assistant at the Open University and at the University of Haifa. Her Ph.D. thesis ‘The Reception of Aristotle in the Work of Yoḥanan Alemanno: Peripatetic Sources in MS Reggio 23’ provides an analysis of the philosophical studies of the kabbalist Yoḥanan Alemanno in the context of fifteenth-century Florence. Her areas of interest include history of philosophy, Jewish history, Kabbalah and digital humanities.

Twitter

Hanna Gentili

Dr. Eyal Rabin

Dr. Eyal Rabin finished his Ph.D. at the Open University of the Netherlands and a social psychologist (M.A. The Hebrew University). Eyal is working as the statistical counselor of the Education and Psychology department at the Open University of Israel. Eyal specializes in the psychology of the Internet users and in learning analytics. In his Ph.D. research, Eyal studied the links between course participants' characteristics and predispositions, using techniques of learning analytics and process mining. He further investigated their online learning processes, and the outcomes of their study in online learning, and mainly in massive open online courses (MOOCs). Eyal's homepage www.eyalrabin.com

Eyal Rabin

Orli Weiser - Doctoral student

Orli Weiser is a doctoral candidate at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev. She holds a B.A. in Political Science and Computer Science from Bar-Ilan University and an M.A. with summa cum laude in Learning Technologies and Networks from The Open University of Israel. Orli is one of the President of Israel's Scholarship winners for scientific excellence and innovation (2020). Her doctoral research "Data Analytics Competencies: Identification, Measurement and Evaluation" won the Ministry of science & technology's Scholarship's for collaboration between academy and industry (2020).

Her primary research interests are Technological innovations in learning and teaching and Data Analytics Competencies. Orli works as a freelance database administrator and teaches "NoSQL" courses at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev and at the College of Law & Business. Orli is the coordinator of the "Employment Beyond Academia" seminars in the “Ma’avarim” project. The "Ma’avarim" project accompanies research-oriented students by creating support networks and transferring knowledge. She also volunteers as group moderator in the "Co.Do - Work alone together" community, which accompanies researchers by helping them to deal with postponement.

Orli Weiser

Edo Amin

Edo Amin is a communication arts professional and a former columnist in national print media. Following online social networks since their inception, his research interests and publication topics include social media, news reporting, the Infodemic, visualization and IP.

Edo Amin

Nehoray Carmi - Instructor

Data scientist, M.Sc. in Computer Science and a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering. Former research assistant at OMILab. Lecturer in various institutions. Instructor of MA course in Psychology "Introduction to Big Data Analysis in Psychology" (14327). Enjoy exploring the connection between machine learning models and human psychology.

Nehoray Carmi

Former Team Members

Omer Tessel - Former Research assistant

Omer is a writer (drama TV series) and B.A. Literature Student at the Open University. She is a research assistant to prof. Adia Mendelson-Maoz in the project "Stylistic Profiles for the Analysis of Modern Hebrew Prose", that won the Israel Ministry of Science grant for Digital Humanities in 2020 Profiles.

Sveta Gimpelson - Former Software Engineer and Research assistant

Sveta is an Msc in computer science student at the IDC. Before that she completed her bachelor's degrees in business management and risk management at IDC and software engineering at Shenkar college. Sveta is interested in data engineering and streaming algorithms.

Or Akerib - Former Data Scientist

Or has BA in computer science from The College of Management Academic Studies and MSc in data science from Afeka Academic College of Engineering. Or is an AI developer, specialized in computer vision via deep learning approaches.

GitHub: https://github.com/akeribpr/works

Dina Bavli - Former Research assistant

Dina is passionate about data, sharing knowledge, and contributing to society and open source. Dina is an NLP & Social network analysis (SNA) researcher at the University of Haifa, her research deals with classifying and characterizing persuasion. She is a former teaching assistant of the courses "Predictive Modeling", "Machine Learning", and "SNA Visualization".

Dan Bareket - Former research assistant

Data scientist and developer with a strong inclination towards the humanities.

Dr. Galit Gordoni – Former Visiting Scholar

Dr. Galit Gordoni (PhD, Haifa University) was a visiting researcher during the period September 2020 - April 2021. Her current research interests focus on psychological and sociological antecedents of human behavior and inter-personal communication. She is the principal investigator of an ongoing research project on information privacy behavior in social network sites. The privacy project was chosen to be included in the data sets produced by GESIS (Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Mannheim, Germany) for the usage of the international social science research community. The privacy questionnaire, developed by the research team, will be implemented in four data collection waves of the GESIS probability-based internet panel for the social sciences (2021-2022).

Nurit Greidingher - Fomer research assistant

MA student at the Sociology Department, Ben Gurion University. Wide experience in the IT world, in recent years leading software development projects in a challenging business environment. Research assistant at the Historic and Contemporary Journalism Archives project.

Yanir Mamor - Former research assistant

Software developer. Research assistant at the historical newspaper archive project.

Tzipy Lazar-Shoef - Former research assistant

Sociologist (MA, department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev). Science, Technology and society PHD. Student at Bar-Ilan University. Researcher at the Guttman Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research in the Israeli Democracy Institute. Research interests include Sociology of Knowledge, web archives, web discourse analysis and computational methodologies.

Daphna Amit - Former research assistant

Sarit Malayev - Former research assistant

Honorary Medical Engineering student at "Afeka Tel Aviv Academic College of Engineering", 4rd year. Participating in Afeka Excellence program. Research assistant at the Audio-Video project.

Aviel Niego - Former research assistant

Full-stack Software Engineer. Developer of the "Tichtov Achi" mobile App Research assistant at the Audio -Video project.