July 2023: Edmond J. Safra and the Good Food Institute joint Entrepreneurs Salon

A Biomedical Informatics Entrepreneurs Salon, titled "Computational Biology and Alternative Proteins Seminar", took place on July 31, 2023, at TAU.

This "Salon" seminar was organized by the Edmond J. Safra Center in collaboration with the Good Food Institute (GFI) Israel. The event aimed to highlight the need and scientific opportunities for computational biology and AI in advancing alternative protein science and innovation.

The Salon featured the following speakers: Michelle Hauser, PhD student from Tel Aviv University (Nachman lab, Life Sciences) and consultant at The Good Food Institute, Dr. Michal Halpert from The Good Food Institute, Prof. Tamir Tuller, Edmond J. Safra member (Engineering), and Prof. Masha Niv from the Hebrew University.

Prof. Noam Shomron, Edmond J. Safra Center member (Medicine) and the Chair of the Salon meetings, opened the event and introduced the first speaker, Michelle Hauser. Michelle presented efforts and challenges in alternative protein research, including several exciting examples of related research projects.

Michelle moderated the meeting and invited Dr. Michal Halpert to be the next speaker. Dr. Halpert presented the Good Food Institute and funding opportunities for academic researchers. Her talk was followed by Prof. Tamir Tuller, who gave an exciting talk about ImaginDairy, a company he co-founded that aims to create clean, sustainable, and scalable dairy proteins. The seminar was concluded by Prof. Masha Niv, who talked about her efforts to understand how bitter taste is elicited and modified by molecules, combining data curation, machine learning, ligand and structure-based drug discovery tools. Each talk was followed by a lively Q&A session.

Prof. Shomron closed the workshop and invited the participants to a reception and refreshments in the lobby, for networking and interactions.

For pictures click here.

The Salon series, led by Prof. Noam Shomron, is a forum to promote entrepreneurship at the convergence of biology, medicine, and computing. It aims to create a meeting, interaction and networking forum for academics, industry, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists interested in joining together biology, medicine and computing. The series is a collaboration with the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School and the BIES series.