 In 2014, Israeli president Shimon Peres, who was introduced to the project during his official visit in Lithuania in 2013, was invited to join the board, together with Lithuania's former President Valdas Adamkus, Lithuanian PM Algirdas Butkevičius and the prominent architect Daniel Liebeskind for the restoration project.The project's Israeli architect, Tsila Zak, elaborated her original plans that had been already adopted by the municipal authorities of Vilnius in 1993, following an international competition in 1989-1990 in which she participated together with the Swedish sculptor Willy Gordon.The original walls of the Great Synagogue were pinpointed by a team of archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and three American universities using ground-penetrating radar in June 2015 beneath the grounds of modern school building.