EU Awards Hebrew University Researchers 47M Shekels In Grants

From quantum theory to cancer treatment, six researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have been awarded grants from a European Union research body totaling 11.5 million euro (47 million shekels). 

The awards from the European Research Council (ERC), known as Consolidator Grants, are designed for researchers who are still consolidating their research process but whose work shows extraordinary promise. The individual grants range from 1.5 to 2 million euro apiece. 

The ERC, which was founded by the European Commission, aims to promote innovation, funding research in EU member states or associate countries such as Israel. 

The six Hebrew University honorees are:

• Dr. Yonatan Anahory of the Racah Institute of Physics, who is developing a microchip designed to manipulate quantum entities in superconducting materials under magnetic fields

• Prof. Yair Furstenberg, head of the Department of Talmud and Halakha, who is exploring the evolution of Jewish legal literature in the first centuries CE  

• Prof. Katrina Ligett, of the Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, who is addressing challenges arising from algorithmic personalization – the practice of providing individuals with personalized opportunities, information, or experiences on the basis of their personal data and on patterns learned from others’ data 

• Prof. Oren Ram, from the Institute of Life Sciences at the Hebrew University, who is developing advanced technological tools aimed at sequencing individual cancer cells

• Dr. Nicholas Stone, affiliated with the Racah Institute of Physics, who is researching tidal disruption events, rare explosions that offer insight into supermassive black hole properties such as mass and spin 

• Dr. Erez Zohar, also from the Racah Institute, who is researching quantum information theory within many-body physics and extending their application into the realm of elementary particle physics