At this week’s annual degree ceremony at the Weizmann Institute of Science, 351 graduates completed their studies at the School of Graduate Studies, including 124 new PhD recipients and 227 master’s degree holders. The class included 144 women and 207 men, and 47 foreign research students who came to study in Israel from countries including China, India, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Italy, France, Belgium, Serbia, Hungary, Switzerland, Finland, Colombia and the United States. More than 20% of the PhD graduates were international students.
The ceremony, held during Israel’s ongoing war, was shaped by the experience of a campus that was directly hit by missiles during the Iranian attack in June 2025. It was the third graduating class since October 7, 2023, and the first since the rocket strike. The graduation speeches repeatedly returned to the damage, the disruption to research, and the institute’s recovery.
Mazel Faraj, speaking for the graduates, described the uncertainty of doing graduate work during war, while serving in reserve duty and emergency organizations, and said the institute became “an island of stability” and a “family.” She noted that even after a missile damaged the labs, students and researchers worked to rebuild and keep going. Faraj joined Weizmann in 2021 through the “Weizmann Young Researchers, Excellence and Diversity” program and has now finished her master’s degree while continuing directly to a PhD in systems immunology under Prof. Roni Dahan.
Dr. Aaron Rafael Lieberman, who completed a doctorate in complex systems physics under Prof. Victor Malka, joked about the institute’s facilities but also said the “tower of ivory” had been shaken by lockdowns and alarms. He said researchers published in Nature Medicine just days after their lab burned, and won six ERC grants within 48 hours after an attempted assassination. Guest of honor Prof. Amnon Shashua, CEO and president of Mobileye, recalled starting his own graduate studies at Weizmann in 1986 under Prof. Shimon Ullman and said the institute taught him that the gap between theory and real-world systems is smaller than it seems. Institute leaders Prof. Maya Shuldiner, Prof. Alon Chen and Prof. Nir Davidzon all emphasized resilience, responsibility, and the graduates’ duty to science, society and humanity.
