By A.M. Goldstein

HAIFA —When I’mad Shams was a boy, he helped his parents pick apples from the trees on their wind-swept plot of land in the Druze village of Majdal Shams on the Golan Heights , along the Syrian border.  He never dreamed that one day he would be attending a university in Israel , let alone the Ivy League’s prestigious Yale University .

I’mad is now Dr. Shams, having just earned his doctorate in evolutionary biology at the University of Haifa .  And Yale has accepted him as a post-doctoral fellow.

The eldest of seven children born to a farming family, Shams recalls that until 1967, his family had a plot of land on which they grew apples, peaches, and plums.  He helped harvest the fruit.

Then came the Six Day War, and half the family plot lay on the Syrian side of the eventual cease-fire border, preventing any access to it.

The Golan still produces apples, which are actually marketed on both sides of the border, but Shams’ parents urged him and his brothers to leave the village, to study, and to make something of themselves other than poor farmers.

 “We Druze are an ethnic minority,” he says.  “On the Golan we feel isolated in our northern village.  So we have no choice but to study and develop in order to advance in life.”

Shams went to the Moscow University , where he earned both his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees and began to study the effect of peptides (short proteins) on blood clotting.  When he returned to Israel , he could not find employment as a researcher and so he became a carpenter.

Still ambitious, he applied to the University of Haifa , and its Institute of Evolution , which has a prominent roster of Russian-trained Jewish scientists, accepted him as a research assistant.  “I wanted to continue to do research,” he relates.  “It didn’t matter if I did it as a volunteer.  The important thing was the quality of the place where I could conduct my investigations.”

The Institute’s staff recognized his potential quickly enough, encouraged, and supported him.  After just eleven months as a research assistant, he was accepted as a doctoral candidate.

 “I am living proof,” says the new Ph.D. recipient, “that if one wants to do research, wants to study and succeed, it’s possible to overcome all obstacles on the road and to realize your dream.”

A.M. Goldstein is the English language editor for the University of Haifa's Department of External Affairs.