I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1962.  I lived there until the age of 20, completing my schooling and first year of college at the  University of the Witwatersrand.  I moved to Israel in 1982, and completed my undergraduate B.Sc. degree in Geophysics and Atmospheric Science, at Tel Aviv Universtiy, in 1985.  I continued on with a M.Sc. degree in Atmospheric Sciences at TAU working on cloud physics, sulfate aerosols, and acidic precipitation.  After the completion of my masters degree in 1988, I moved on to Columbia University in New York,where I completed my Ph.D. in Atmopsheric Sciences via the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and NASA's Goddard Institute for Space  Studies in  New York. My Ph.D. research dealt with global climate change, having a special  focus  on  global  lightning activity.  After getting my Ph.D. in 1993, I moved to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California for a 2 - year postdoc in the  Atmospheric  Sciences  Division.  My  postdoc  dealt  with  lightning - produced NOx and the implications for tropospheric chemistry.  Since 1995 I am a faculty member of the Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences at Tel Aviv University.  I am married and the proud father of three beautiful girls, and one granddaughter (eating ice cream with me during COVID19).  Besides sports (running) I enjoy painting and cooking.