David Avnir教授，以色列耶路撒冷希伯来大学化学院教授。欧洲科学院院士（Member, Academia Europaea, 2009），国际溶胶凝胶学会会士（ISGS Fellow, 2018），美国科学促进会会士（AAAS Fellow, 1996）。主导创建了国际溶胶凝胶学会（The International Sol-Gel Society）并担任首届主席，曾任耶路撒冷希伯来大学化学院院长和研究生院院长（实验科学），获得以色列化学会奖(2011)，国际溶胶凝胶学会终身成就奖（2013）等。

Avnir教授是有机/无机杂化材料领域的开拓者和奠基者之一，在溶胶凝胶杂化材料、分子掺杂金属材料、手性化学、催化分形理论等诸多材料科学和化学领域均作出了先驱性的工作。他发明并发展了有机分子掺杂溶胶凝胶材料的方法，利用客体分子和溶胶凝胶基体的相互作用制备了独特的有机无机杂化功能材料。这些杂化材料在光学、生物、催化等领域得到了广泛应用。他拥有多项溶胶凝胶材料的重要专利，并在此基础上创建了纳斯达克上市公司Sol-Gel Technologies Ltd.，广泛应用于全球高端防晒品的UV Pearls即是该公司的产品之一，因此他的头像被置于希伯来大学发明者墙 (Hebrew University's "Way of the Innovators")。Avnir教授在Nature, Science, Nature Chemistry, J. Am. Chem. Soc., Adv. Mater., Angew. Chem.等著名期刊上发表300余篇论文，引用>32000次, H-index: 79。国际学术刊物Nanoscale和J. Sol-Gel Sci. Tech.均曾出版专刊致敬Avnir教授。

    The sol-gel process has opened the possibility of obtaining glasses and ceramics at low temperatures, such that enable the incorporation of organic molecules and metal complexes inside these matrices. Since the library of molecules is very large, the ability to merge any component of this library into glasses, has opened the way to many applications all accross chemistry, physics, materials sciences, and biological secinces. A particular domain that has gained from this ability is the general field of interaction with light, namely optics and photophysics. In the lecture I will describe some contributions we have made to this field. Specific examples include (as time will allow):

* Electrochemical methods for the preparation of optical sol-gel thin films

* Optically transparent, conductive, flexible sol-gel films

* Hybrid polymer/sol-gel submicron luminescent particles

* Core-[sol-gel shell] optical filter sub-micron particles

* Sol-gel optical chemical sensors

* Sol-gel photochromic and light-gate materials

* A sol-gel approach to solar light storgae