President’s Scholarship for PhD Student Shir Lissak

Doctoral student Shir Lissak from the Faculty of Data and Decision Sciences has been awarded the Scholarship for Excellence in Science and Innovation for Outstanding PhD Students.

This prestigious fellowship is awarded annually to 12 select researchers, who join an elite group leading science and innovation in Israel. This year, the scholarship, amounting to 150,000 NIS for each recipient, was dedicated to the theme of “Mental Health and Resilience – Theory and Practice.”

Doctoral student Shir Lissak

Lissak is an outstanding doctoral student conducting her research under the supervision of Prof. Roi Reichart. Her research is at the intersection of natural language processing (NLP) and mental health, focusing on developing methodologies for risk prediction, identifying risk factors, and providing emotional support in the field of mental health.

At the beginning of her research career, Lissak concentrated on uncovering risk factors associated with suicidal tendencies and developing methodologies for identifying these factors. The research revealed significant insights into risk factors and even led to the discovery of a new risk factor. The study was later expanded to identify success metrics for psychotherapeutic treatments in individuals diagnosed with depression and to develop approaches for providing emotional support to at-risk populations.

Lissak’s research success also stems from fruitful collaborations with leading professionals in the field, including Prof. Anat Brunstein Klomek, dean of the School of Psychology at Reichman University; Prof. Eyal Fruchter, faculty member at the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion and director of the Ma’ale HaCarmel Mental Health Center; Prof. Sigal Zilcha-Mano, head of the Psychotherapy Research Lab at the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Haifa; and Dr. Yaakov Ophir, clinical psychologist and research fellow at the Hebrew University and the Technion.