The appointment will strengthen the ties between the two universities by allowing senior staff to visit and collaborate. Rothenberg will work with Dr Elad Gross on elucidating the mechanisms of catalytic processes using in situ spectroscopy. The visit will build further the connections between the Institute of Chemistry at the Hebrew University and the UvA's Research Priority Area Sustainable Chemistry.

During his visit, Rothenberg will also teach a short course on catalysis, based on his textbook Catalysis: Concepts & Green Applications. Earlier collaborations between the two institutes included PhD student exchange and culminated in the discovery of chiral metals, which was published as a joint paper in Nature Chemistry. Rothenberg, who received his PhD from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem cum laude twenty years ago, is looking forward to return as a professor and teach at his old alma mater. "It will be a little surreal, standing and teaching at the same lecture halls where I sat as a student so long ago, but I am really looking forward to it", he says.

​The Lady Davis Fellowship Trust was established in 1973 to provide an opportunity for visiting professors, post-doctoral researchers and doctoral students from abroad, regardless of nationality, gender or field of scholarship to teach, study and participate in research in Israel at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at the Technion Institute of Technology in Haifa.