Alexander Shleyfman was born in Ukraine (in the former Soviet Union) and came to Israel with his family as a child. Despite the difficulties of studying in a new country and a new language, Alex discovered early on that he was attracted to the language of mathematics. His passion led Alex to higher studies in the field at the Technion. However, he always saw mathematics more as a tool than as an ultimate destination. Hence, while working on his BSc, he delved into topology and functional analysis, and upon completing his degree he started seeking a better way to apply the tools he had acquired. Artificial Intelligence (AI) gave him the context he sought. Alex earned his MSc in the topics of planning and learning at the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management at the Technion and went on to do his PhD research on symmetries in classical planning under the supervision of Prof. Carmel Domshlak. Alex moved to Canada for a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto, where he was hosted by Prof. J. Christopher Beck and worked on resource management for cloud services and numerical planning. Today, back in Israel, Alex is a postdoctoral fellow in the Cognitive Robotics lab at the Technion, hosted by Prof. Erez Karpas.