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Two days into the recent Israeli war in Lebanon, the campus where Rivka Carmi makes her professional home turned into a summer camp.

About 100 children, some with their families, descended on Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, followed shortly by 200 other households, all refugees from Israel's North, then being pounded by Hezbollah shells.

"We filled up every vacant bed in our dormitories," recalled Carmi, noting that her school also opened its student sports center free of charge to the displaced northern residents.

"Altogether, we were very busy in the hotel business during this period," she said. "It was very interesting, very inspiring."

That ability to find fascination and value in another academic's logistical headache will likely serve Carmi, who just took on the presidency of Ben-Gurion last May. She was visiting the Washington area last week as part of a fund-raising trip to the United States. She also was a panelist at the United Jewish Communities Lions of Judah conference, held in D.C.

With her ascent to the top leadership post at BGU, the geneticist and physician became the first woman to lead an Israeli university.

"I was part of innovation in the medical school," said Carmi, citing the development of programs in community and global health. "Now I want to extend this to the entire university."

Israeli-born, Carmi earned a medical degree from the Hebrew University's Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem. She did her residency in pediatrics, a fellowship in neonatology at the Soroka University Medical Center and a two-year fellowship in medical genetics at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard University Medical School.

A full professor since 1995, Carmi most recently occupied the Kreitman Foundation Chair in pediatric genetics at Ben-Gurion. From 2000 to 2005, she was dean of BGU's faculty of health sciences and for three years, ending also in 2005, she chaired the Israeli Association of Medical Deans. Amid these responsibilities, she also served as acting director of the National Institute for Biotechnology in the Negev.

Before administrative duties took her away from the laboratory, Carmi studied genetic diseases found among the Bedouin peoples of the Negev. Indeed, she identified 12 new genes and delineated three new genetic syndromes, one of which, a fatal skin-peeling condition in infants, bears her name.

She admits to a certain nostalgia for genetic research.

"It's one thing I really miss so much," Carmi concedes, "but when I decided to change my career path, I knew I'd have to give up something very dear to me for greater good, for the development of the Negev, which I strongly believe is the future of Israel."

Asked about her vision for BGU, she points to achievements by past administrations in adding buildings, labs and students, what she calls horizontal growth.

Carmi's goal now is "vertical development," meaning creating an academic setting "that will attract the best and the brightest." Her efforts will come amid an expected wave of retirements and Israel's continuing brain drain, as professors seek more lucrative posts abroad.

Asked if women offer a different style of leadership, Carmi cautions, "There's always a risk of overgeneralizing, but I do bring something special to any academic job."

She flags "teamwork," "multitasking" and reliance on "gut feeling" in decision making as female strengths that abet executive roles.

As she works to strengthen research in what she points to as BGU's core fields ‹ arid zone studies, biotechnology, community and global health, and Hebrew literature ‹ Carmi seems likely to maintain her institution's role as a player in the human development of the Negev.

A year ago, when Israel evacuated from Gaza, some of its erstwhile residents pursued studies and jobs at BGU and its affiliated hospital, she notes.

Beyond that, the university's school of social work and department of behavioral sciences took part in the "emotional and social side of the process," offering counseling in person and later, via Internet videoconferencing to community health clinics where the former Gazans had settled.