Postdocs

Information for Postdocs. See similar page for all academic visitors.

תוכן עניינים

1 Obtaining a student Visa
2 Extending your student Visa
3 Your first day in the department
4 Your second week in the department
5 Email and personal website
6 Dormitories
7 Campus
8 Conferences
9 Miscellaneous
10 For faculty

Obtaining a student Visa

Make sure that your passport expiration date is far away.
Complete and sign the application form. Note that to you will need an address in Israel; if you will stay at the university dormitories, you can put that on the form.
Prepare a physical and electronic copy of the following documents before contacting the closest embassy of Israel:
1. Two passport pictures.
2. Invitation letter with your full name (as it appears on the passport), passport number, and start+end dates of your postdoctoral studies.
3. Proof of the financial support/scholarship for the postdoctoral period.
4. A travel document that is valid for at least one year, from the start date of the postdoctoral studies, electronic copy of the page with your personal details, and previous entry visas to Israel if you have any.
Contact the closest embassy of Israel, ask for an appointment for A2 Visa and ask whether additional documents are needed. The embassy may indeed require for additional documents. e.g. residence permit (in case you are not living in your home country), hotel reservation (contract with the university dormitories, in case you will stay there), flight tickets, Ph.D. diploma, work reference letter, etc'.
Pay the fee and attend the appointment. They will provide you with the information for the payment, the date and time of the appointment, and the list of documents that you must send in advance via e-mail (scanned). You will be asked to show the originals during the appointment.

Note: the visa is for one year starting the date of the appointment. It is therefore advised to make the appointment as close as possible to your arrival to Israel.

Extending your student Visa

See here.

Your first day in the department

Get yourself a local SIM card (you will need it for all the later steps). There is a store at the center across the street, called Blue Phone; they sell prepaid SIM cards by 019 mobile. The SIM card costs 40NIS (one time), and a standard plan (including unlimited calls + 20GB data/month) costs 49NIS/month. The phone number at the store is 03-5259192.
Get yourself a bank account and a debit card. Inside campus, you'll find a branch of Mizrahi Tefahot (bank code # is 20, and the branch code # is 414). Make sure to bring in your postdoc invitation letter, your passport, and the number of your local phone. They may later ask you to e-mail them a copy of the postdoc invitation letter.
Fill the two forms: Postdoctoral fellowship application form and Registration form for postdocs. Submit them (along with your passport-sized photo, a photocopy of your passport, and a photocopy of the approval of your Ph.D. degree) to Rivka Wolberger.
Get yourself an health insurance. One option is fill the form of Harel Yedidim and mail it to Einat@yedidim.co.il.
1. The daily premium insurance costs around 1.9 USD per day.
2. You can pay for the whole period in one payment (using any credit card, not necessarily an Israeli one), or ask them to charge you on a monthly basis (in which case, the payment takes place every 9--11 of the month). It is also possible to pay through an international transaction, but you have to pay the commission of the banks. If you have an Israeli account you can pay from there.
3. When filling the insurance application form, make sure to set the cover dates to start on the day of signing the former (and not earlier).
Ask your postdoc advisor to:
1. Assign you a room at the department;
2. Assign you a P.O. box of the department;
3. Show you the library;
4. Fill and submit the scholarship payment form;
5. Provide you the acknowledgement-for-funding string to be included in your research papers.

Your second week in the department

Go to the bank to pick up your debit card.
Go to Rivka Wolberger to pick up your student card, to create an Inbar account, and to provide there your bank details, so that you can receive your monthly scholarship.
Contact Doron Kurzberg to receive username+password for your unix account.
You can also connect to Bar-Ilan computer from home

Email and personal website

Your email address is LOGIN@macs.biu.ac.il, where LOGIN stands for the username of your unix account.
1. To access your mailbox through the web, click here.
2. To download your mail using POP3, configure your email client to use the server mailhost.cs.biu.ac.il (port 110).
3. To set up mail forwarding, read the instructions.
Your website address is http://u.math.biu.ac.il/~LOGIN, where LOGIN stands for the username of your unix account.
1. To set up your webpage, use an SFTP client to connect to planet.cs.biu.ac.il (port 22), and then set up your website files (e.g., "index.html") on the folder /u/grad/LOGIN/WWW , where LOGIN stands for the username of your unix account.

Dormitories

About

Registration

The dormitories do not supply linens, sheets etc. please make sure to bring whatever you need.

You will need to take a permanent payment form from the dorms headquarters and bring it to your bank. This will set up an automatic monthly payment of your rent and water/electricity usage.

Note that the dorms have a laundry room, and that you can pay in it with cash (the instructions there seem to insist that you download some app to pay with your phone, but in fact you only need to have 11-13 NIS exact change (maybe times two, for the washer and the dryer)).