Research in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data science encompasses the collection, management, processing, analysis and visualization of data associated with a wide range of academic disciplines and commercial applications, as well as the analysis of meaning, drawing conclusions and developing tools that rely on the data collected, both to distil knowledge and to generate coherent responses to new queries. Depending on the context, data may include numeric measures, texts, images and videos. In recent years there has been an accelerated growth of such research and, accordingly, increased financial investments were made both by the industry and by public and private universities and research institutes. AI and data science are relevant to almost all academic domains, and hold the potential for innovation and breakthroughs with major implications to our daily lives.
In 2018, a 150M NIS four-year academic research program was launched, comprising: (i) financial support for the establishment of university-led research centers via an “accelerated track” (allocation of equal budget according to threshold criteria), and a supplementary, competitive track; (ii) the creation of a national body: IDSAI (Israel Data Science and AI Initiative), whose goal is to synchronize the activities of the research centers above, and promote international and industrial collaborations, as well as organize a yearly international conference; (iii) the promotion of cloud solutions for teaching and research; and (iv) doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships. Today, there are Data Science and AI research centers in seven universities across Israel (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Weizmann Institute), The Technion, Tel-Aviv University, Bar-Ilan University, Ben-Gurion University in the Negev, and The University of Haifa) that have benefited from financial support of close to 120 Million NIS through the program (total funding, not including matching of 25%).
In late 2021, the above academic research program became part of a 900M NIS National AI Initiative jointly funded, until 2026, with the he Ministries of Defense, Finance and Innovation-Science-and Technology, and the Israel Innovation Authority, following the recommendations of an independent committee set up by the NRI forum (National Research Infrastructures), comprising the aforementioned bodies. The initiative provides additional support for: NLP (Natural Language Processing) and HPC (High Performance Computing) infrastructures, data resources, technology sandboxes, trustworthy AI regulation, and AI implementation in the public sector.
For further details, please contact the National AI Initiative’s manager, Ziv Katzir (PhD): ziv.katzir@innovationisrael.org.il.
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