Why did The Scientist magazine name the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, the "best place to work in academia" outside the United States - for the third time?

Here we take a look at just three of the many innovations under development at this institute for graduate study:

Dr. Michal Sharon's mass spectrometer, which vaporizes large molecules to analyze their shapes and compositions - with implications for correcting damaged proteins that lead to diseases like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's; Dr. Avishai Gal-Yam's research into exploding stars; and Dr. Maya Schuldiner's custom-made robotic microscope.

Schuldiner stresses that the Weizmann was founded by scientists and is run by scientists. "And it therefore has a spirit, or an understanding, that science is not a profession. Science is a lifestyle. It's something that you take with you, to whatever you do."