International profile: Germany, Israel

This Friday, Dalhousie will welcome eight university leaders from around the world as part of the proceedings to mark President Florizone's installation. The leaders, each with an impressive set of accomplishments, will receive honorary doctorates from Dalhousie and will take part in a panel discussion on "The future of universities," 9 a.m. Friday in the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium; all are invited to attend. The event will also be broadcast live in Alumni Theatre, Agricultural Campus and will be webcast on the Installation website.  

Each day this week we'll be sharing two of the leaders' profiles here on Dal News. For full details on the honoured guests and Installation proceedings, visit the Installation website.

Gerhard Fouquet
President, Christian-Albrechts-University at Kiel

As President of Christian-Albrechts-University at Kiel, Germany, Dr. Gerhard Fouquet has been instrumental in honing his university’s focus and championing its pursuit of excellence. Among his many initiatives: the establishment of unique international partnerships with universities sharing similar specialties, influence and stature, with the goal of fostering academic innovation supported by a strong administrative core.

One of those partners is Dalhousie University. It is a natural alliance for the two universities. Under Dr. Fouquet’s leadership, Christian-Albrechts-University at Kiel and Dalhousie are collaborating on world-leading oceans research. This work involves a joint graduate school in the oceans area, supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Helmholtz Association in Germany. This collaborative graduate training initiative will provide students from Dalhousie and Kiel with experience in the other country’s ocean science and technology laboratories and industries. Administrative excellence is also a focus of Dalhousie’s partnership with Christian-Albrechts-University at Kiel. In this partnership, administrative best practices are being assessed and shared, allowing both institutions to benchmark and collaborate in the pursuit of administrative excellence.

Dr. Fouquet was born in Ludwigshafen in 1952 and studied German and history at the universities of Giessen and Mannheim from 1975 to 1980, earning his doctorate from the University of Siegen in 1985. He was appointed to the chair of Economic and Social History at Christian-Albrechts-University at Kiel in 1996, which he continues to hold. His main field of work is the social and economic history of the late Middle Ages. Dr. Fouquet served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities from 2000 to 2002 and was appointed Deputy Rector in 2005. In December of 2007, he was elected President of the university. He is an appointed honorary knight among the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, the German protestant branch of the Knights Hospitaller, respected for its charitable works.

Rivka Carmi
President, Ben-Gurion University of Negev

Professor Rivka Carmi knows what it means to be a pioneer. In 2000, she was elected Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the first woman to hold this position in Israel. In 2006, she was elected to serve as Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s president, again a first, as the first and only woman to serve as the president of an Israeli university.

She has also been a pioneer in medical research, focusing on genetic diseases in the Negev Arab-Bedouin population. Her research began more than 30 years ago when she realized that few researchers were exploring the hereditary diseases of the marginalized Bedouin Arabs. Since then, she and her team have identified more than 40 genes and new mutation.

Professor Carmi was born in Israel and graduated from the Hadassah Medical School of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She completed a residency in pediatrics, a fellowship in neonatology at the Soroka University Medical Center and an additional two-year fellowship in medical genetics at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard University Medical School. Rejecting an offer of a post at Harvard, she returned to Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, where she went on to hold several important academic administrative positions in the Faculty of Health Sciences, culminating in her election as president.

Professor Carmi’s pioneering skills make her ideally suited for her role at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. She has urged universities to open their libraries and labs for use by the colleges so that students and faculty members can develop their research skills. She has breached other barriers, as well. A program created by Ben-Gurion University with the Jordanian Red Crescent, and financed mostly by the university, trained Jordanian students in emergency medicine. Under her leadership, the university has had a significant local impact and has established itself as an outstanding university in a variety of fields, due in no small part to Professor Carmi’s innovative research and her ability to transcend barriers. That local focus has translated into global excellence, as Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, for example, has developed deep expertise in areas such as advanced water technologies that have in turn resulted in collaborative research relationships with universities around the globe.