Benny Chor                          בני שור

School of Computer Science בית הספר למדעי המחשב

Tel-Aviv University אוניברסיטת תל-אביב

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Mount Doom, aka Ngauruhoe, at background, during a rare        In Vadi Tala'a, on the way to Gulat-El-Azrak. Sinai high mountains,

clearing in the rainy month of February 2004, New Zealand.        October 2005.

     With the Jumanji crew and skipper, Luxor, Egypt, April 2006.   Above Jutta, Sno valley, Khazbek region. Georgian Caucasus, August 2007.

Annapurna Base Camp, Nepal, October 2008.	Col Ferret, on the Italy/Swiss border, Tour du Mont Blanc, August 2009.

Studies

• 1980 - B.Sc., Mathematics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
• 1981 - M.Sc., Mathematics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
• 1985 - Ph.D., Computer Science, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA

Academic Experience

• 1985-1987 : Postdoc at MIT and Harvard.
• 1987-2001 : Faculty member, Computer Science, Technion.
• 1999-2000 : Sabbatical visitor, Inst. of Fundemental Sciences, Massey Univ., New Zealand.
• 2001- present : Faculty member, Computer Science, Tel-Aviv University.
• Aug. 2006 – Feb. 2007: Sabbatical visitor, EBI, and visiting fellow, Clare Hall, Cambridge, UK.

Research Interests

• Computational Biology.
• Cryptography and Randomness.
• Mathematics and Computer Science Education for Kids.

Teaching at Tel-Aviv University

Computational Models (Introduction to the Theory of Computation)   (Fall 2003/04, Fall 2004/5, Spring 2006, Spring 2007, Spring 2009, Spring 2010)

Introduction to Modern Cryptography  (Fall 2001/2, Fall 2007/8 , Fall 2009/10)

Workshop in BioInformatics (Spring 2003, Spring 2004, Spring 2005,  Spring 2006, Spring 2008, Spring 2009)

Computational Genomics (Fall 2002/3, Fall 2004/5, Fall 2005/6, Spring 2009)

Seminar in BioInformatics (Spring 2005,  Fall 2005/6, Spring 2007, Spring 2008)

Extended Introduction to Computer Science (Spring 2002, Spring 2003 )

Topics in BioInformatics  (Spring 2003, Spring 2004)

Erdos Number

My Erdos number is 2 (using a reduction from Noga Alon number 1, via this path). 
My Horn  Number  is 1, via this path (which implies, among many other
consequences, a Venter  Number 2, and even the hard-to-get Ruppin  Number 2). 

Publications (partial lists)

DBLP list

PubMed list (neither disjoint of DBLP, nor contained in it).

Full versions of conference abstracts  (very partial)

Journal publications  (very partial)

Contact Information

Email: benny *AT* cs.tau.ac.il

Phone: +972-3-640-5977

Fax:     +972-3-640-9373
Address: School of Computer Science, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel

Other Activities of Interest

• Computer Science Unplugged (מדעי המחשב ללא מחשב):   Great activities for primary school through middle age kids, exploring some of the fascinating ideas in computer science, without using a computer at all. Together with Shimon Schoken from IDC, I am working on expanding the activities, designed originally by Tim Bell, Ian Witten, and Mike Fellows, and on translating them to Hebrew. This is an ongoing project, but partial results can already be viewed, downloaded, and used here. Middle intermediate school sections interested in integrating this material into their regular studies are welcome to contact us. 
• The Israeli foundation for Math achievement for all (IFMA): A non-profit organization, founded by teachers, scientists, and high-tech industry people, with the mission of restoring the excellence of school math.   (להחזיר עטרת החינוך המתמטי לישנה)

• Etgarim (challanges): A nonprofit organization that provides access to outdoor sports and recreation activities for disabled children and adults.

• Tantrix:  A highly twisted  (and addictive) strategy game, straight from NewZealand. Played on-line or as a table game.

Graduate Students

Current Ph.D. Students

Eyal Cohen.

Current M.Sc. Students

Roy Navon (Supervised jointly with Zohar Yakhini)

Elad Liebman (Supervised jointly with Eitan Or-Noy)

Former  Students (at Tel-Aviv Univ.)

Ph.D.

Tamir Tuller, Computational Aspects of Molecular Evolution.  September 2006.

M.Sc.

• Yifat Felder. Using novel enrichment techniques to analyze protein superfamilies abundances. December 2008. (Supervised jointly with Sagi Snir.)

• Yaron Levi.; Genomic distributions of DNA k-mers. May 2008. (Supervised jointly with David Horn.)

• Osnat Daphni, Gene Expression Analysis of the COPS 9 Signalosome, October 2007.  (Supervised jointly with Danny Chamovitz.)

• Anat Rapoport, AML Approximation in Phylogenetic Trees. August 2006.

• Avidan Reich, Detecting Transcription Factors Motives. August 2005. (Supervised jointly with Hanne Volpin.)

• Anat Katz, Identifying Arabidopsis Organs Using OPSM Gene Expression Analysis. March 2005. (Supervised jointly with Hanne Volpin.)

• Giora Unger, Linear Separability and Classifiability of Gene Expression Datasets. March 2004.

Former Graduate Students (at the Technion)

Ph.D.

· Sagi Snir,  Computational Issues in Phylogenetic Reconstruction: Analytical Maximum Likelihood Solutions, and Convex Recoloring. July 2004.

· Niv Gilboa, Computationally Private Information Retrieval. February 2001.

· Amir Ben-Dor,  "Constructing Radiation Hybrid Maps of the Human Genome'', December 1997.

· Amos Beimel, "Secret Sharing and Key Distribution Schemes'', July 1996.

· Guy Even, ``Design of VLSI Circuits Using Retiming'', November 1994.    (Joint supervisor: Ami Litman.)

· Eyal Kushilevitz, "Privacy in Distributed Computing'',  July 1991.

M.Sc.

· Dan Pelleg, ``Algorithms for Constructing Phylogenies from Quartets'', June 1998.

· Ziv Mador, ``Probed Partial Digest Problems'', December 1996.

· Amir Ben-Dor, ``On the Complexity of Computing the Permanent'', December 1993.

· Leonid Zosin, ``Privacy of Symmetric Functions'', November 1993.

· Amos Beimel, ``Ideal Secret Sharing Schemes'', October 1992.

· Ophir Rachman, ``Wait-Free Consensus Protocols in Shared Memory Distributed Systems'', June 1992. (Joint supervisor: Gabi Bracha.)

· Lee-Bath Nelson, ``Resiliency of Interactive Distributed Tasks'', March 1992.

· Merav Michaeli, ``Generalization of the Group Testing Problem'', January 1992.

· Benny Pinkas, ``Cryptography and Weak Sources of Randomness'', July 1991.

· Netta Shani, ``Privacy of Dense Symmetric Functions'',  July 1990.

· Lior Moscovici, ``Solvability in Asynchronous Environments'', October 1989.

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Official Disclaimers (by law, you have to read and understand these before entering this site)

• This is an equal opportunity/affirmative action site. As such, it will try (but not necessarily succeed) to represent certain groups that are under-represented in the East side of the campus in general, and in the Computer Science school in particular. We strongly encourage diversity, and consequently support groups that are still viable but endangered.

• You must be 18 years or older to legally enter this site.

• The views expressed here need not be shared by our employer (and we'd bet they don't). Yet the side does represent (to the best of our knowledge) the views of the (self appointed) head of the CS school safety committee.

• We will strive to represent even the most lunatic West Bank settlers that dare hang around in campus, and in fact we know at least one highly positive specimen of this group, coming from Kedumim. (Sorry, you guys from the Gaza strip, even this site has some moral principles, and to the best of our memory, Gaza has never been under Jewish control - even good old Samson realized it was strict Pleshet territory.)
• Another minority whose voice we will proudly carry is those people who did a full military service (full meaning 2 years or more) in units whose  number is smaller than 1000, and is either a prime number, a prime power, or has at most two prime factors. For the readers who do supervised learning, 7, 35, and 202 are positive examples, while 960, 6400 and 7300 are negative examples.
• We originally though of raising the feminist cause as well, but were told (by post-feminist experts from a foreign university of high credentials) our support is not really needed.
• Another endangered species we thought of supporting is the legendary Moa. Unfortunately, the recent evidence as to the siting of the Moa in New Zealand's Southern Alps, near Arthur's Pass, were proved to be highly unreliable. Apparently this evidence was given under a very high dose of NZ west coast dark beer.
• In this context, it is worth mentioning that Research titled "is the Guinea Pig a MOA?", done in a Laboratory of Information Biology & Molecular Evolution (with admittedly dubious credentials) when it was still located at a local university,  and published in a well known international journal, proves without the shred of a doubt that Moas never inhabited the East side of Tel-Aviv university campus. We know an extinct ...ahhmmm... lost cause when we face one!