The Robbery

Israeli computer hacker Moran Cerf won the Moth story telling competition for this story of when he tried to rob a small bank in Israel.

The moral of the story? If someone asks you to rob a bank, just say “Yes.”

Update: Moran’s CV seems to be evidence of this “Never say no” attitude.

professional experience
2009 – 2011 User Experience Consultant, Vivvva
2006 – 2009  Scientific consultant, AFI
2008 Lead prototype designer, Pharmaco-Kinesis
2003 – 2005  Senior security consultant, iMPERVA
2002 – 2003  Customer trainer, Product architect, TTI Telecom
2000 – 2002  R&D trainer, Check Point 
2000 Inventor, S.I.T
1998 – 2000  Software developer, Team leader , Log-On
   
1995 – 1998  Intelligence corps, Israeli Defense Forces

languages
English, Hebrew, French
Basic knowledge of Chinese, Czech

honors and awards
2010 Artwork selected for the VSS program cover
2009 Selected as ‘hot topic’ in the Society for Neuroscience conference
2009 Good Clinical Practice (GCP), UCLA
2005 Writing competition in memory of Ofer Lider, Weizmann Institute of Science
2004  Awarded full-tuition scholarship for the year 2005, Tel-Aviv University 
2003  President Scholarship for Excellent Ph.D. students. 4 Years scholarship, Bar-Ilan University
2001  Master’s thesis, summa cum laude, Tel-Aviv University 

publications
Number of publications: 17 (including 2 theses, excluding submitted papers)
Number of citations: 142 (source: Google Scholar, June 2010); n = 11, mean = 14.10, std = 17.44
H factor: 2
Impact factor: 13.04 (average, based on 5 journals with known impact factor); std = 21.77

Erdös number: 3 (via Harel, McEliece, Erdös)

grants
2009 – 2011 NIH/NIDA, 1R21DA024423-01, $574,119
2009 – 2011 NIH/NIDA, 5R21DA024423-02, $551,561 
 
reviewer
Nature, NIPS, Journal of Neuroscience, PLoS, Journal of Vision, Perception, Vision Research, European Association for Computer Graphics, Journal of Computer Science and Technology and others.
memberships
Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, Society of Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience Society, Skeptics Society, Vision Sciences Society, Nature readers panel

computer skills
Matlab, C, C++, VB, Python, Perl, PHP, ASP, Database administration, Unix system administration, Linux, networking; Photoshop, Maya, Flash, Premiere, After Effects, Illustrator, and others; Application penetration testing, Security code review, analysis, and auditing.

funding
Mathers foundation, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Dana Foundation, National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

teaching/assistant
2011 Marketing behavioral Ph.D seminar, Stern business school, NYU
2009 Cognitive Psychology 
2006 – 2008  Introduction to Neural Computation, Caltech 
2008 – 2009  Brains, Minds, and Society, Caltech
2006 The Neural Basis of Consciousness, Caltech 
2005 Neural Computation, Caltech 
2001 Internet Security, Tel-Aviv University 
2000 Theoretical Methods in Physics, Tel-Aviv University