Yair Censor (Hebrew: יאיר צנזור, born November 29, 1943) is an Israeli mathematician and a professor at the University of Haifa, specializing in computational mathematics and optimization, as well as applications of these fields, in particular to medical imaging and radiation therapy treatment planning.
Censor was born in Rishon LeZion. After serving in the IDF, he studied at the Technion in Haifa, where he earned his D.Sc. in 1975 under the supervision of Professor Adi Ben-Israel. He joined the department of mathematics at the University of Haifa in 1979, and became full professor in 1989. Censor has published over 100 scientific papers. His contributions include research on mathematical aspects of Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT). Founder (in 2002) and head of The Center for Computational Mathematics and Scientific Computation at the University of Haifa. He co-authored with S.A. Zenios the book Parallel Optimization: Theory, Algorithms, and Applications (Oxford University Press, New York, NY, USA, 1997), for which he received, together with Professor Zenios, The 1999 ICS (INFORMS Computing Society) Prize for Research Excellence in the Interface Between Operations Research and Computer Science.[1]
Active in the struggle to preserve the academic freedom of the research universities in Israel, he was one of the founders of the Inter-Senate Committee (ISC) of the Universities for the Protection of Academic Independence,[2] and head of that committee in the years 2002-2005. Published opinion articles in Israeli newspapers concerning this subject, and maintains a website on this topic. [3]