At a time when Israel remains embroiled in a war with Hamas and is continuously recovering from the trauma of the October 7th terrorist attacks, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) is working to drive the nation’s recovery, rebuilding, and resilience.
What exactly is the University’s formula for this journey? It’s a unique mixture of brains, heart, and soul.
On May 7th, Americans for Ben-Gurion University (A4BGU) will host Remarkable Resilience. Excellence in the Face of Adversity, a special virtual experience showcasing BGU’s transformative role in a post-October 7th Israel.
During A4BGU’s fifth annual signature virtual event, attendees will journey through BGU’s three campuses in Beer-Sheva, Sde Boker, and Eilat, discovering a powerful story of overcoming adversity in exceedingly challenging times. BGU is standing strong in wartime and spearheading the entire nation’s recovery from the Hamas attacks through the institution’s four pillars: education, research, building up the Negev, and community service and social justice.
BGU’s outstanding students and faculty will join the virtual experience to tell the story of the University’s excellence in the face of adversity, rooted in the roles of all three campuses. The Beer-Sheva campus is the “brains” of BGU, home of its world-changing research and innovation. The University’s “heart” is the Eilat campus, hub of its community service initiatives. The Sde Boker campus is BGU’s “soul” — where its namesake and Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, began implementing his blueprint for the country’s future, making the desert bloom by revitalizing the surrounding towns.
Today, BGU’s desert-based Sde Boker campus is home to cutting-edge desert research, through institutes devoted to water, biotech, and renewable energy. It’s in essence a living laboratory where researchers develop scalable solutions not just for the Jewish state but for the world — and where students from across the globe are trained to do the same.
Prof. Simon Barak, an Associate Professor at BGU’s Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research (BIDR) on the Sede Boker campus, explained that there are three aspects of the campus that make it stand out.
“The first is that we have so many disciplines in such a small area that you get really unique collaborations happening,” Prof. Barak said. “The second is that students and faculty, we all live in the same area, and that makes for a very special relationship between the students and the supervisors. And third reason is that per capita, we are the most international campus in Israel.”
Indeed, about half of the 200 students on the Sde Boker campus are international students.
Prof. Barak’s research focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms of plant tolerance to harsh environmental stresses such as heat, drought, and high soil salinity. Furthermore, he’s a recognized leader in studying how plants are able to survive in some of the world’s harshest environments such as those found in the Negev desert. Identifying genes that allow these plants to thrive could be used to engineer crops to grow in arid regions.
“It’s not just important for us to be doing cutting-edge science. But it’s important for us to be doing that science right here in Sde Boker,” said Prof. Barak. “We really do feel that we are fulfilling David Ben-Gurion’s vision of developing the Negev. Ben-Gurion said that, ‘It’s in the Negev where the creativity and the pioneering spirit of Israel will be tested.’ The students from all over the world and from Israel want to come to the Sde Boker campus because we’re dealing with some of the world’s most intractable problems.”Attendees of A4BGU’s May 7th virtual experience will hear inspiring stories from across the University’s campuses, such as the firsthand accounts of Prof. Barak as well as Sharon Chemweno (Sde Boker), a student whose fertilization research is revolutionizing sustainable agriculture in her home country of Kenya; Prof. Reli Hershkovitz (Beer-Sheva), Dean of the BGU Faculty of Health Sciences, who played a critical role in supporting medical students post-October 7th; and Prof. Nadav Shashar (Eilat), a coral reef restoration pioneer who gives students hands-on opportunities in marine conservation.
For the second consecutive year, A4BGU’s signature virtual event will be hosted by Tel Aviv-based digital and television journalist Natasha Raquel Kirtchuk, a lead anchor for i24 News. In its first three years, A4BGU’s annual virtual event, “Celebrating the Remarkable,” had spotlighted BGU’s latest innovative breakthroughs in science and technology. Today, the event has pivoted to reflect the University’s renewed mission in a post-October 7th world.BGU was directly and disproportionately impacted by October 7th compared to other Israeli academic institutions in terms of the number of students, faculty, and staff who were killed, wounded, kidnapped, and called to IDF reserve duty. Yet in no way did that stop BGU’s community from leading the recovery from the attacks both regionally and nationally, through a wide array of volunteer and community service efforts.Remarkable Resilience. Excellence in the Face of Adversity takes place on Wednesday, May 7th, 2025, at 12 p.m. ET.
This article was written in cooperation with Americans for Ben-Gurion University