Board of Governors
As set out in the 1972 agreement between the United States and Israel that established the BSF, the Foundation is governed by a Board of Governors consisting of 10 members, five from each country, appointed by the respective governments. The Board is responsible for determining financial and policy issues of the Foundation. The Board meets twice a year, once in Jerusalem and once in Washington D.C. The chair and vice chair of the BSF alternate annually between the two countries.
The following are the Board of Governor Members for 2024-2025:
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BiographyMs. Cathleen Campbell, U.S.A.
ChairCathy Campbell has four decades of experience in international science, technology and security programs, policies and management. In 2017-2018 she was a Visiting Scholar in the AAAS Center for Science Diplomacy where she researched national approaches to science diplomacy among Arab countries. Prior to AAAS, she served for ten years as President and Chief Executive Office of CRDF Global, where she led science diplomacy initiatives and oversaw science cooperation with over forty countries. Previously, Cathy served as director of the Office of International Technology Policy and Programs, Department of Commerce from 1998-2002 and senior policy analyst in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from 1995-1997. She was the U.S. State Department’s program officer for Soviet/Russia science and technology affairs from 1989-1994. Before joining the State Department, Cathy held research positions at the Library of Congress, Rand Corporation and Presearch, Incorporated.
Cathy has a Master’s degree from George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and a B.S. from Georgetown University. She serves on the External Advisory Board, Pennsylvania State University’s School of International Affairs; and the Advisory Committee, Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS). She is a Fellow of the AAAS.
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BiographyMs. Aviagail Wenkart
Budget Division, Israel Ministry of FinanceAvigail Wenkart is currently the head of R&D and the Higher Education team at the Budget Department of the Ministry of Finance. She was previously the Director of the Macro-Finance Team where she managed a team of two economists responsible for the Israel Ministry of Finance’s economic policy for financial markets. She was also Chair of the Government Price Control Committee where she managed the prices of products and services subject to the Israeli Price Control Law. Avigail earned her B.A. in Philosophy, Economics and Political Science (PEP Program) and her M.A in Public Policy, Honors Program, both from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
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BiographyDr. Joshua Gordon, U.S.A
Director, U.S. National Institute of Mental HealthDr. Gordon received his MD/PhD degree at the University of California, San Francisco and completed his Psychiatry residency and research fellowship at Columbia University. He joined the Columbia faculty in 2004 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry where he conducted research, taught residents, and maintained a general psychiatry practice. In September of 2016, he became the Director of the National Institute of Mental Health.
Dr. Gordon’s research focuses on the analysis of neural activity in mice carrying mutations of relevance to psychiatric disease. His lab studies genetic models of these diseases from an integrative neuroscience perspective, focused on understanding how a given disease mutation leads to a behavioral phenotype across multiple levels of analysis. To this end, he employs a range of systems neuroscience techniques, including in vivo anesthetized and awake behaving recordings and optogenetics, which is the use of light to control neural activity. His work has direct relevance to schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, and depression.
Dr. Gordon’s work has been recognized by several prestigious awards, including the The Brain and Behavior Research Foundation – NARSAD Young Investigator Award, the Rising Star Award from the International Mental Health Research Organization, the A.E. Bennett Research Award from the Society of Biological Psychiatry, and the Daniel H. Efron Research Award from the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology.
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BiographyProf. Peter Hotez, U.S.A.
Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology & Microbiology, Baylor College of MedicinePeter J. Hotez, M.D., Ph.D. is Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology & Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine where he is also the Director of the Texas Children’s Center for Vaccine Development (CVD) and Texas Children’s Hospital Endowed Chair of Tropical Pediatrics. He is also University Professor at Baylor University, and Fellow in Disease and Poverty at the James A Baker III Institute for Public Policy.
Dr. Hotez is an internationally-recognized physician-scientist in neglected tropical diseases and vaccine development. As head of the Texas Children’s CVD, he leads the only product development partnership for developing new vaccines for hookworm infection, schistosomiasis, and Chagas disease, and SARS/MERS, diseases affecting hundreds of millions of children and adults worldwide. In 2006 at the Clinton Global Initiative he co-founded the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases to provide access to essential medicines for hundreds of millions of people.
He obtained his undergraduate degree in molecular biophysics from Yale University in 1980 (phi beta kappa), followed by a Ph.D. degree in biochemistry from Rockefeller University in 1986, and an M.D. from Weil Cornell Medical College in 1987. Dr. Hotez has authored more than 400 original papers and is the author of the acclaimed Forgotten People, Forgotten Diseases (ASM Press) and the recently released Blue Marble Health: An Innovative Plan to Fight Diseases of the Poor amid Wealth (Johns Hopkins University Press).
Dr. Hotez served previously as President of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and he is founding Editor-in-Chief of PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, and in 2011 he was awarded the Abraham Horwitz Award for Excellence in Leadership in Inter-American Health by the Pan American Health Organization of the WHO. In 2014-16 he served in the Obama Administration as US Envoy, focusing on vaccine diplomacy initiatives between the US Government and countries in the Middle East and North Africa. In 2018 he was appointed by the US State Department to serve on the Board of Governors for the US Israel Binational Science Foundation, and he received the Sackler Award in Sustained Leadership from ResearchAmerica!
In 2016, Prof. Hotez emerged as a major national thought leader on the Zika epidemic in the Western Hemisphere and globally. He was among the first to predict Zika’s emergence in the US and is called upon frequently to testify before US Congress, and served on infectious disease task forces for two consecutive Texas Governors. For these efforts in 2017 he was named by FORTUNE Magazine as one of the 34 most influential people in health care.
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BiographyDr. Jessica Robin
Acting Office Head, office of International Science and EngineeringDr. Robin has been at NSF since 2007 and is the Acting Office Head in the Office of International Science and Engineering (OISE). In this role she oversees OISE and provides executive leadership to the NSF Director and other senior leaders in diplomatic engagements and international programs related to science and technology. Additionally, she manages NSF participation in numerous high-level science and technology ministerial meetings and represents NSF at these and other international meetings. She also serves as the U.S. representative to the OECD Global Science Forum and Bureau.
Previously, she served as the NSF Deputy Office Head in OISE and the Section Head and Acting Division Director in the Division of Earth Sciences, Directorate for Geosciences (GEO). She has also served in various programmatic and advisory roles throughout the Foundation and has led efforts to support interdisciplinary and transformative research. Additionally, she co-chaired the OECD Expert Group on Effective Policies to Foster High-Risk/High-Reward Research. Prior to joining NSF, she worked at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and was an adjunct lecturer at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
She has a bachelor’s degree in industrial labor relations and a master’s degree in soil science from Cornell University and a doctorate in geographical sciences from the University of Maryland, College Park. She is fluent in Spanish. -
BiographyProf. Alex Lubotzky
Professor of Mathematics at Weizmann Institute and Weil Professor of Mathematics at the Hebrew UniversityProf. Alex Lubotzky is a mathematician working mainly in group theory and its connections
with number theory, geometry, combinatorics and computer science. He has
published over 160 papers, 1 textbook, 3 research books (two of which received the
Ferran Sunyer I Balaguer Prize – an international prize for research books).He is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities (2014), the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2005) and the Hungarian Academy of
Science (2022). He has received a number of awards: the Erdos Prize (1990), the
Rothschild Prize (2002), the Israel Prize (2018) and an honorary degree from the
University of Chicago (2006). He has received ERC advanced grants three times
(2009-2014, 2015-2020, 2021-2026).He served on various Israeli and international committees, was a member of the
Israeli parliament (Knesset) 1996-1999, and the president of the Israeli Mathematical
Union (2019-2020).