Prof. Yossi Yovel

Prof. Yossi Yovel is a full Professor and the head of the lab of NeuroEcology in the School of Zoology and the head of the Sagol School of Neuroscience at Tel Aviv University. He received a B.Sc. degree in Biology and another one in physics both from Tel Aviv University, an M.Sc. in Neuroscience from Tel-Aviv University and a Ph.D. in Biology and Machine Learning from the University of Tuebingen, Germany. He then completed two post-docs: one in the Weizmann Institute and one in the University of Chicago before joining Tel-Aviv University Faculty in 2011. Prof. Yovel has authored more than 50 journal papers and presented dozens of invited talks. His high impact papers were published in journals such as Science, Nature Neuroscience, Nature Ecology and Evolution, Science Advances and PNAS. Among other awards, in 2012 he received the Alon scholarship awarded by the higher Council for Academic Studies in Israel, in 2016 he received the Krill prize for young scientists awarded by the Wolf foundation and in 2018 he was appointed as a member of the Young Israeli Academy of Sciences and in 2021 he received the Blavatnik prize awarded by the Israeli Academy of Sciences. In 2012 he was selected as one of Israel’s most influential people by the ‘The Marker’ Magazine. In the past 7 years he raised more ~30M NIS from different grant agencies including two prestigious European Research Committee (ERC) grants. Yovel is also engaged in various public activities including chairing the Biology committee of the Ministry of Education. This committee is in charge of developing the high school curriculum in biology in Israel. Prof. Yovel’s research combines biology with technology. His work on bat bio-sonar has driven the development of a bat-like autonomous robot that navigates autonomously using sound only, as well as several other bio-mimetic applications in precision agriculture (two of which were recently patentized). His work on bats drove the development of miniature GPS sensors that allow tracking the smallest animals ever tracked before. His work on bats’ use of bio-sonar for navigation in the field in parallel to using MRI to study the bats’ brain in the lab made him establish a new field which he terms Neuro-Ecology which brings together ideas from Neuroscience and Ecology.