Prof. Tamar Dayan is the founding Chair of the Steinhardt Museum, Curator of Terrestrial Vertebrates, Professor of Zoology at the School of Zoology, and the Robert Raynor Chair for Environmental Conservation Research. She received her PhD from Tel Aviv University in 1989 and subsequently went on post-doc with Daniel Simberloff at Florida State University and then with Stephen Jay Gould at Harvard. She returned to Israel in 1991 to assume a faculty position at the School of Zoology, TAU.

Prof. Dayan conducts research in community ecology, evolutionary ecology, conservation biology, and zooarcheology. Her research combines basic studies of the evolution of body size and activity rhythms at the community level, and applied conservation biology research focusing on global change drivers and their effects on patterns of biodiversity and the provision of ecosystem services.

Over the past two decades Prof. Dayan has been deeply involved in various conservation-oriented projects: as Chair of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, Chair of Israel’s Man and Biosphere UNESCO committee, Chair of the Open Landscapes Institute, Chair of the Biodiversity and Conservation Forum of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and member of the Boards of Directors of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, the Oceanographic and Limnological Institute, and other organizations.