Udi Sommer is a recipient of several grants and fellowships including the Fulbright Doctoral Fellowship and a grant from the National Science Foundation, Sommer has studied the American and Israeli political systems, and immigration. He publishes regularly as a scholar as well as in major media outlets in Israel.

His book Home but Away: The Experience of Immigrant Parents (Krovim Rechokim in Hebrew) is a popular nonfiction based on a series of in-depth interviews with former Israelis who raise(d) their children in America. A series of workshops and talks in North America (New York, Toronto, Los Angeles, San Francisco) in front of American and Israeli audiences is scheduled for the winter and spring of 2010. 

Home but Away is the first to deal exclusively with the experience of parents who are immigrants. While living with an identity crisis may characterize the life of immigrants, when they become parents, many of them feel the need to pass on to their children a more coherent sense of who they are. With its set of challenges, parenting also offers immigrant parents otherwise unavailable opportunities to solve their identity crisis.

Udi is a graduate of the Amirim Program for Outstanding Students at the Hebrew University and holds an MA in clinical psychology from the Tel Aviv University. His PhD in political science is from Stony Brook. He lives in New York with his wife and two kids.