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  • Thursday, June 4th, 2026
  • Midtown Location
  • RSVP: gal@cftau.ca

Prof. Yossi Yovel

Prof. Yossi Yovel is a full Professor and the head of the lab of Neuro-Ecology in the School of Zoology and the former head of the Sagol School of Neuroscience at Tel Aviv University. He received a B.Sc. degree in Biology and another one in physics both from Tel Aviv University, an M.Sc. in Neuroscience from Tel-Aviv University and a Ph.D. in Biology and Machine Learning from the University of Tuebingen, Germany. He then completed two post-docs: one in the Weizmann Institute and one in the University of Chicago before joining Tel-Aviv University Faculty in 2011.

Prof. Yovel has authored more than 50 journal papers and presented dozens of invited talks. His high impact papers were published in journals such as Science, Nature Neuroscience, Nature Ecology and Evolution, Science Advances and PNAS. Among other awards, in 2012 he received the Alon scholarship awarded by the higher Council for Academic Studies in Israel, in 2016 he received the Krill prize for young scientists awarded by the Wolf foundation and in 2018 he was appointed as a member of the Young Israeli Academy of Sciences and in 2021 he received the Blavatnik prize awarded by the Israeli Academy of Sciences.

In 2012, he was selected as one of Israel’s most influential people by the ‘The Marker’ Magazine. In the past 7 years he raised more ~30M NIS from different grant agencies including two prestigious European Research Committee (ERC) grants. Yovel is also engaged in various public activities including chairing the Biology committee of the Ministry of Education. This committee is in charge of developing the high school curriculum in biology in Israel. Prof. Yovel’s research combines biology with technology.

His work on bat bio-sonar has driven the development of a bat-like autonomous robot that navigates autonomously using sound only, as well as several other bio-mimetic applications in precision agriculture (two of which were recently patented). His work on bats drove the development of miniature GPS sensors that allow tracking the smallest animals ever tracked before. His work on bats’ use of bio-sonar for navigation in the field in parallel to using MRI to study the bats’ brain in the lab made him establish a new field which he terms Neuro-Ecology which brings together ideas from Neuroscience and Ecology.

The Genius Bat: The Secret Life of the Only Flying Mammal

By Prof. Yossi Yovel

Released October 2025

With nearly 1500 species, bats account for more than twenty percent of mammalian species. The most successful and most diverse group of mammals, bats come in different sizes, shapes, and colors, from the tiny bumblebee bat to the giant golden-crowned flying fox. Some bats eat fruit and nectar; others eat frogs, scorpions, or fish. Vampire bats feed on blood. Bats are the only mammals that can fly; their fingers have elongated through evolution to become wings with a unique, super-flexible skin membrane stretched between them. Their robust immune system is one of the reasons for their extreme longevity. A tiny bat can live for forty years.

Yossi Yovel, an ecologist and a neurobiologist, is passionate about deciphering the secrets of bats, including using AI to decipher their communication. In The Genius Bat, he brings to vivid life these amazing creatures as well as the obsessive and sometimes eccentric people who study them–bat scientists. From muddy rainforests to star-covered night deserts, from guest houses in Thailand to museum drawers full of fossils in New York, this is an eye-opening and entertaining account of a mighty mammal.