Institutes, Centers & Projects

The Edmond J. Safra Center for Bioinformatics

The Edmond J. Safra Center for Bioinformatics aims to advance the role of Tel Aviv University (TAU) as an international leader in research and education in bioinformatics. Established in 2005, the Center brings together all bioinformatics-related research and teaching activities across campus into one multidisciplinary hub of excellence. More than 180 researchers from 48 research groups spanning Exact Sciences, Life Sciences, Medicine and Engineering collaborate and interact in the Center's activities. It aims to be a leading force in the development of novel drugs, biomedical technologies and computational tools that will improve human health worldwide.

The Center has broad international collaborations including (a) the Koret-University California Berkeley-TAU Initiative in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, (b) a collaboration with the Computational Genomics Summer Institute of University California Los Angeles, (c) a partnership with Harvard University in the Entrepreneurs Salon series, (d) a collaboration with the University California San Francisco on Computational Biology and Drug Discovery. These collaborations have great effect on the quality and impact of the Center's research.

One of the major goals of the Center is to promote excellence in medical bioinformatics research, by fostering collaborations between bioinformatics scientists and physicians. In 2020 the Center, partnering with the Sackler School of Medicine at TAU, provided for the first time seed research grants to support fundamental and translational collaborative research of bioinformatics researchers and clinicians. Similar initiatives are underway with the Cancer Center at Sheba Medical Center, and with Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center. The Center is also collaborating with the new AI and Data Science Center at TAU to establish a Health Data Science Infrastructure Unit on Campus.

The Deutsch Institute of Computer Science

The Deutsch Institute of Computer Science has started its operation in 1996, and has been officially inaugurated in May 1998. It is affiliated with the School of Computer Science, and supports the various research activities carried out in the School. The Institute's budget is based on income from an endowment, donated by the Deutsch family, and is mainly used to support graduate student scholarships, visits of leading scientists, research equipment, development of infrastructure for research laboratories, and travel of graduate students to international conferences and workshops, The Institute is a general-purpose research entity, and its budget supplements and enhances specific externally-funded research projects.

The Laura Schwarz-Kipp Institute of Computer Networks

The Laura Schwarz-Kipp Institute of Computer Networks conducts and coordinates basic and applied interdisciplinary research across the spectrum of this field, establishes a core of scientific leadership in computer networks, and encourages graduate students to pursue research in this area. 

The Adams Super-Center for Brain Research

The Adams Super Center fo Brain research was inaugurated in 1993, as one of several interdisciplinary centers within Tel Aviv University. Its main mission is to advance cooperation between researchers in the different faculties on brain research issues. The researchers come form multiple disciplines - varying from Engineering and Exact Sciences to Psychology and Medicine. The Center has an International Advisory Board to oversee its development, a Director and an Academic Committee appointed by the President and the Rector of Tel Aviv University. The Center organizes seminars on topics of general interest in neuroscience. It supports workshops, with particular emphasis on themes from which multi-disciplinary collaborations may arise. It also supports graduate students and provides seed money for research projects in the neurosciences. One of the research groups within the Center is the Computational Neuroscience group, that consists of three members of the School of Computer Science working on Neural Networks, Machine Learning and Computer Vision.

The Hermann Minkowski - MINERVA Center for Geometry

The Herman Minkowski--MINERVA Center for Geometry was inaugurated in 1997. The aim of the Minerva Centers is to support and enhance scientific cooperation between Israeli and German scientists. This Center combines several research groups in the School of Computer Science and Pure Mathematics, and some affiliated groups in the Department of Applied Mathematics, in the School of Math who study theoretical and applied problems in geometry. The research areas supported by the Center within the School of Computer Science include Discrete and Combinatorial Geometry, Computational Geometry, Robotics and Manufacturing, Computer Vision, Computational Structural and Molecular Biology, Image Processing and Compression, Neural Computation and Pattern Matching. The Center aims to provide a suitable research environment that will support and stimulate research in the various topics listed above. It will also aim to enhance the existing interaction between our applied groups and the Israeli high-tech industry, and the strong on-going collaboration between our groups and the German partners of the Center, for mutual scientific benefits for both sides.

The Maus Multipurpose Computer Laboratory

The Marcos and Celia Maus Multipurpose Computer Laboratory was established in 1994. It is a large open space divided into subunits, each hosting a research group, consisting of several graduate students, and dedicated to a specific field of applied research in Computer Science. These fields include Computer Vision, Computational Neuroscience, Scientific Computing, Computational Molecular Biology, Distributed Computing, Software Engineering, Computer Systems, and more. The total number of students working in the Lab is about 50, the majority of which are Ph.D. students. Several of our research laboratories, listed below, are currently located within the Maus laboratory.

Affiliation with Industry, Academia, and Government Research

The School of Computer Science values its varied links with the high-tech industry and constantly tries to expand them. An important communication channel between the industry and our School is via our students that go to work for the Israeli software industry after (or even before) they graduate, as well as graduate students that come from the industry. This, as well as interaction of individual faculty members with their industrial colleagues, help us to focus our research on important problems that come from practice, and to pass on some suggested research results for possible use in newly developed products.

Concrete relations with the industry include research and equipment funding by industrial partners; joint research and development projects (some funded by government grants that emphasize industry-academia synergy); courses in specific areas that are taught in the School by industrial experts; conferences organized jointly, and more.

Several members of our School have long standing relations with the industry, including consulting or even founding start-up companies that exploit research results. Our computer lab has served as a testing ground for new and innovative equipment, for example in the area of computer networks and communication. In turn, this equipment enables our researchers to pursue advanced research work exploiting the new technology.

The School of Computer Science plans to further expand its relations with industry. We aim to have more industrial courses (mostly project oriented) taught by industry experts. We also aim to establish an applied research center that will work closely with the industry.