Associate Professor & Director, Sagol Center for Brain and Mind

Nava Levit-Binnun, PhD is a scientist and social entrepreneur, currently serving as an associate Professor and the director of the Sagol Center for Brain and Mind at the Reichman University, Israel. She received a B.Sc in Physics from the Hebrew University and a M.Sc and doctorate in Neuroscience from the Weizmann Institute of Science. She is also a fellow of the Mind & Life Institute.

The Sagol Center@RU which she heads is a unique research center dedicated to driving change in various sectors in Israeli society, such as education and health, through rigorous scientific work and its dissemination. The center focuses on understanding psychological and physiological underpinnings of healthy qualities of mind such as resilience, mindfulness, compassion, and reconciliation as well as intervention research to study the effects of mindfulness-based programs and its adaptations to various cultural and conflictual contexts.

As part of the greater societal vision of Sagol Center, Nava founded in 2009 the Muda (in Hebrew “Aware”) Institute for Mindfulness, Science and Society which has been promoting public awareness of the scientific basis of mindfulness and other contemplative practices. It is the only academic center in Israel to train and accredit mindfulness instructors (MBSR and MBCT protocols), providing scholarships to support training of mindfulness instructors from minority communities, and with more than 250 graduates of its teacher training programs.

Another social initiative that Nava founded and is currently the academic director is the Sagol Purple Schools Initiative, a whole-school program intended to create a profound paradigm shift in the Israeli schooling system through the dissemination of mindfulness and compassion based social-emotional learning with system-based tools. The Purple Schools Initiative works with schools, municipalities, and the Ministry of Education.