“It’s a tough time to go” to Israel now, said Mark Nagurka, associate professor of mechanical and biomedical engineering at Marquette University. Nevertheless, he was scheduled to leave this week to spend the coming academic year there as a Fulbright scholar at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot.
And he is doing so eagerly. Two powerful interests compelled him to apply for the Fulbright grant, which is sponsored by the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
One is his “spiritual connection” to Israel. “I have a love of Israel; part of my heart is in Israel,” he said in a telephone interview.
As an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, he spent his junior year at Tel Aviv University. He also has a sister living in Jerusalem; and he has spent the last two summers studying Jewish subjects at the Pardes Institute in Jerusalem.
The second interest is professional. Israel is renowned as a center for technological research and development generally; and a member of the Weizmann Institute faculty, Tamar Flash, professor of computer science and applied mathematics, is working on a project for which “my background fits perfectly,” Nagurka said.
Nagurka is deeply interested in the human body “as an engineering system” and in interactions between humans and machines, which he said is “a really hot research area.” In Israel, Flash is studying how the brain sends commands to muscles; and one of her projects is trying to create a robot that can accurately mimic human arm motions.
In addition to collaborating with Flash, Nagurka will teach classes at the Weizmann Institute, work with graduate students, lead seminars and do guest lecturing at other Israeli institutions.
He will be bringing back to Marquette the knowledge gained through his research. Finally, as the Fulbright Program is an arm of U.S. foreign policy, he will be helping build closer U.S.-Israel ties, Nagurka said.
“This is my small way to contribute to Israel and be in Israel for an extended time,” Nagurka said. Nevertheless, Israel will “probably give me much more than I contribute to [it].”
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