Professor Dan Shechtman is a Nobel Prize winning chemist and a scientist who works at a number of universities and governmental bodies across the world, including the Techion-Israel Institute of Technology, Iowa State University, the US Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory and the US National Bureau of Standards.

Schechtman has dedicated much of his academic life to the study of materials sciences. In 2011 he became the fourth Israeli in 10 years to earn a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of quasicrystals. Schechtman’s discovery was controversial and, at first, even outright dismissed by some of his peers. Other scientists eventually began to confirm and accept Schechtman’s findings, with the community now embracing his work and holding a deeper understanding of the nature of matter as a result.

Schechtman is a member of Dūcere’s Global Leaders Faculty and spends part of his time working on introducing the Science in Kindergartens program to classrooms throughout Israel. This initiative aims to help foster scientific thought and critical thinking during a child’s early years in school. Schechtman hopes to project will help encourage a generation of students to think with free and inquisitive minds.