May 2024: TAU-Clalit MOONSHOT-MED grant program - Kickoff Symposium

Tel Aviv University (TAU) and Clalit Health Services (Clalit) have recently established a joint research program - MOONSHOT-MED. This program, in collaboration with the Edmond J. Safra Center for Bioinformatics at TAU, aims to encourage, fund, and support innovative multidisciplinary and groundbreaking biomedical research, harnessing the multidisciplinary research expertise at TAU, and the clinical knowledge and extensive medical and health data available at Clalit. 

To foster collaborations between researchers and clinicians form TAU and Clalit, we were excited to announce a joint kickoff Symposium. The Joint TAU-Clalit symposium took place on May 9 2024 in Jaglom hall at TAU, and brought together some 120 researchers and clinicians from both institutions.  The goal of the meeting was to bring together clinical and computational researchers, allowing them to introduce themselves and their research, to learn about possible research partners, and to start discussions about potential collaboration and grant submission.

The program started with welcoming remarks by Prof. Ariel Porat, TAU’s president, and Mr. Eli Cohen, Clalit’s CEO. They both commented about the tremendous potential of this new joint initiative. It was followed by short introductions to the new grant program by Ms. Reut Ohana, EVP, General Manager, Clalit Innovation, and by Prof. Elhanan Borenstein, Head of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Bioinformatics. The Edmond J. Safra Center is managing this collaboration on behalf of TAU.

The symposium program featured two sessions, each including eight flash talks, in which TAU and Clalit researchers were invited to introduce themselves and their research domains. Each 5-minute talk was followed by a brief Q&A. The first session was moderated by Prof. Ran Gilad-Bachrach, Edmond J. Safra affiliate (Engineering), and the second was moderated by Dr. Yiska Weisband  from Clalit. During the break between the two sessions, participants enjoyed refreshments and were able to mingle and discuss new collaborations.

In the last part of the event, Prof. Elhanan Borenstein briefly introduced the Edmond J. Safra Center and announced the Joint TAU-Clalit Call for Research Proposals. The call for joint grants is aiming to support data-focused and ground-breaking research collaborations.  Winning projects will be awarded up to NIS 300,000 each from the joint TAU-Clalit research program and from the Edmond J. Safra Center and gain access to relevant data from Clalit. Ms. Reut Ohana further presented Ocean, a new platform from Clalit that allows researchers to browse and explore Clalit’s data catalogs.

The symposium concluded with brief summary remarks by Prof. Ran Balicer, Deputy-DG & Chief Innovation Officer, Clalit, and Mr. Hagai Itkin, Head of Medical Collaboration in TAU's President Office.

The participants from both institutes were very excited about this new grant program, praised the fascinating and diverse flash talks, and are looking forward to start new research collaborations.

For the program click here.

For the Call for Proposals click here. Deadline of submitting proposals is July 14, 2024.

For pictures from the event click here.