Dear ICS members,
It is my great pleasure to announce that the winner of the 2022 ICS-Shahar Prize for the Excellent
Administrative Assistant is Ms. Liat Presman, Academic staff and Dean’s office coordinator at the Schulich
Faculty of Chemistry, Technion. She will receive the prize for her remarkable professional and creative
management with passion and dedication, work ethic, human relations, and outstanding organizational skills
manifested by voluntarily expanding her contributions beyond the formally expected.
Liat Presman was born in Israel in 1976. Following her military service (1994-1996), Liat completed her B.A.
degree in Human Resources & Education at Haifa University (1997-2000). Shortly after, she joined Rafael Ltd.
and became a Human Resources Manager (2001-2004) in a division with over 100 employees. Later (2004-
2009), she became Deputy Head of Corporate Social Responsibility, where she initiated new projects in the
community, integrated Rafael volunteers into various voluntary projects around the country, recruited and
retained volunteers in Rafael and organized events and ceremonies. In 2009-2014 she relocated to Germany
due to her partner’s employment in Zim. In 2015-2017 they moved to Hong Kong where she became a
representative of the United Israel Appeal (UIA), dealing with fundraising campaigns, independent office
management, and financial management.
In 2018 Liat joined the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry as the Academic Staff and Dean’s Coordinator, and very
quickly, she proved to be highly proficient in managing the Dean’s office. Her extensive international
experience has proven to be an invaluable asset for the faculty, impacting every aspect under the Dean’s
responsibility, including handling new faculty appointments and facilitating the candidate’s end-to-end
recruitment process, handling faculty member promotions, the nomination of Faculty for awards and prizes,
scheduling and enabling visits of academic guests, organizing faculty ceremonies and events, and providing
administrative assistance to the Dean. In many of the Technion’s Faculties, these multiple tasks require
several employees. Liat exceeded her expected responsibilities and took on additional duties enthusiastically
and with a work ethic. She often volunteers to help with Faculty events and fill in for absent administrators.
She used the latest developments in information logistics to create effective databases to improve retrieving
and entering information regarding faculty members, faculty awards, and correspondence. She voluntarily
joined a pilot program in the Technion to convert the current system for tracking a faculty’s career progress to
a digital and paperless filing system. Liat also initiated interdepartmental brainstorming sessions with other
administrative assistants around the campus to improve further cooperation, collaboration, and information
flow between different departments. As the Faculty is internationalizing rapidly, Liat volunteers to help non-
Hebrew speakers among the young faculty members, students, and postdocs with forms and service
providers. She even joined personal meetings to provide direct translation services. Liat is married to Eli, the
mother of Ido (19), Tomer (15), and Maya (10).
The prize in memory of the late Amir Shahar, contribution of Bioanalytics Ltd., will be presented to Ms. Liat
Presman on February 20, 2024, during the 87th ICS Annual Meeting.
Congratulations to Liat for her achievements!