Dr. Iris Tabak was the Co-Director of the first cohort of the Mandel Scholars in Education program. She is a senior lecturer in the Department of Education at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, an associate editor of the Journal of the Learning Sciences, and a past president of the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS). Her research focuses on conceptual knowledge, cognitive skills and identification as they develop in real-life contexts through interpersonal and technology mediated interactions. She holds a B.S.E. in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in Learning Sciences from Northwestern University and was awarded both the NARST Outstanding Dissertation award and an Award for Early Career Contributions (AERA). She was a fellow at the Mandel Leadership Institute in the Mandel Fellowship for Educational Researchers Program in 2003 and a Mandel Visiting Scholar in 2010.