Lauren Ortosky was accepted to a competitive program based at the IDC Herzliya outside of Tel Aviv, Israel for an intensive two-week study of negotiation and conflict resolution. The institute is led every year by Columbia Business School Professor Adam Galinsky and NYU Social Psychology Professor Yaacov Trope. Each year, about a dozen students are brought together from around the world for an intensive summer course on a subject they share interest in. Students were housed in a hotel on Rothschild Boulevard in downtown Tel Aviv, giving them an outstanding opportunity to closely connect with peers who share their research interests as they explored potential collaborations while wandering through the city in the evenings. She is grateful to report that these relationships have continued!

The institute coincided with a two day conference on negotiation and conflict resolution that brought together the top researchers on these issues from around the world to report on their latest work.

While in Israel, Lauren held multiple in depth meetings on potential research collaborations with Professor Eran Halperin of IDC. After giving her final presentation at the institute, she spent about 10 days traveling solo through small towns in the Galilee, Jerusalem, and hiking the deserts in the south of the country. It was a tremendously enriching experience academically, culturally, politically, and socially!