Thursday, May 19, 2011

CSLS Retreat

I am one of the heads of the Computer Science and Computational Biology dual-major program at the Hebrew University. The unofficial name more often used is Computer Science - Life Science (CSLS). As part of our activities we hold a yearly retreat with all the undergraduate students in the program, teachers, and some of the program graduates. 

During the retreat the third year students present their senior year project, we have some social activities, discuss the program and issues raised by students at different stages, and have a guest lecturer. 



Our guest lecturer this year was Roy Kishony from Harvard Medical Center who talked about bacteria, anti-biotics, and forces that shape they evolution of anti-bacterial resistance.


The location of the retreat is on the beach in Hof Dor (also known as Tantura, see a wikipeida article on the complex history of the place), south of Haifa, which hosts a very beautiful settings for activities. The location is northen border of the sandy beaches of southern Israel, which are formed by sand from the Nile. From here to the north there are hills of sandstone that form ragged beaches. The location was the southern-most Phoenician  city of Dor, which served as a port for various sea-routes of the Phoenician traders. They also had an active industry for collecting sea shells from which the "Royal Purple" color was manufactured (a very rare and expensive dye in the ancient world). 



Today, the natural lagons are a harbour for fishing boats and a public beach.



We finished the retreat with a short trip in Ramat Hanadiv, a park established by the Baron Edmund de Rothschild Foundation in his memory at the southern part of the Carmel mountain. This includes very nice gardens and a large area for nature conservation 


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