Hi all!

My name is Itamar Menuhin-Gruman, and I feel like a long-time newcomer to the community :)

On the EA front, I have been lately volunteering intensely in my local chapter (EA Israel), including leading the career fellowship program (loosely based on HIP's workbook), supporting the management in various capacities (such as helping in various operations behind our upcoming conference), and I have several ideas that I think would help the global community that I want to promote :)

On my career front, I took a meandring route. I started from ~3 years R&D in radiation propagation analysis (both in antennas design, mutual interference, and human safety fronts). I then did an undergrad in physics and applied math. Afterwards, I started a career in data science, first focusing on agriculture (~1 year), then cyber security (~2 years), followed by predicting high-risk population for various diseases, based on health records (~3 years). 

In tandem, I completed an M.Sc. in mathematical theory of deep learning, and also was team leader of an iGEM team (studential synthetic biology competition) in creating algorithms for mutationally robust genetic designs. Today, I am studying for a Ph.D. in the field, on the same topic.

On a personal level, I have a lovely partner that taught me a lot about altruism, and two beautiful black cats that I'm fairly sure are not altruistic. I practice aerial acrobatics and japanese group drumming (taiko), and I have a particular fondness for going into new fields, especially when I have both a lot to learn and to contribute from the start.

I have several ideas regarding how to contribute to our community. Currently, most of these ideas center around either use of AI to reduce our bottlenecks, or enhancements to our educational programs. As a newcomer to the global scene, I would love these ideas to get checked and validated, improved, or offered alternatives. 

I would also love to have talks with people from Probably Good, HIP, and similar organizations, in order to become a better career instructor.

Reach out to me for any of these topics:

1. My take in synthetic biology, including the perspective of a reseacher, developer, igem team leader... I would love to give potentially relevant insights in biosecurity projects.
2. I would love to collaborate on interesting data science projects, where I believe I have more to contribute in healthcare, tabular data, and recently agentic workflows (still a beginner). I am good at pivoting to other domains. I apologize ahead of time, I have a heavy workload, so I will need a strong pitch to join a project in high-capcity.
3. As the EA Israel career fellowship instructor, I would love to chat with people regarding career dilemmas. While there are people in the community much more experienced than I am (Probably Good, HIP...), I might have additional useful insights and my own relevant take.