Yoav Zigdon is 24 years old and lives in Be’er Sheva. With his father’s encouragement Yoav started a BSc in physics at the Open University, in parallel to middle school. After a year of studies, he made a transition to the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, where, at the age of 19,  he completed the BSc with the highest honors. He received multiple awards for academic excellence. Yoav is interested in the nature of black holes and the physics of the early universe. In his Master’s degree, he researched radiation properties from black holes and how an observer may gain information about the interior.

His PhD research aims at showing that a special system of interacting long strings at high temperatures can account for the primordial epoch of the Universe. This is demonstrated through comparison with a conventional theory of the early Universe; a space that expands exponentially. Yoav’s most recent paper, his third one, established a mathematical description of these strings. Such a system of strings may describe the initial state of the Universe in which we live.