US-Israel Collaborations: Predicting and preparing for the next crisis

Using data science to create more livable cities

US-Israel Collaborations: Predicting and preparing for the next crisis

Using data science to create more livable cities

Faculty at Israeli and Bay Area academic institutions are working together to address major social and public health issues of our day through joint research, scholar exchanges, and sharing knowledge. The scholars have distinct areas of expertise and specialization that complement and build on one another’s strengths.

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Using data science to create more livable cities

Many modern cities, ever larger and denser, have become complex systems within systems. The partnership between engineers at Tel Aviv University (TAU) and Stanford University on Smart Cities and Digital Living seeks to advance multidisciplinary basic and applied research in data science that enhance the quality of life, safety, and efficiency of cities. The challenges and potential of this program is collecting and analyzing massive volumes of urban user data from an ever-increasing range of sources and devices.

TAU’s Fleishman Faculty of Engineering and Stanford together already have a critical mass of some 50 scholars and academics working on related analytics, information systems, and operational research, as well as looking at supply chains, privacy concerns, and the role of social media. Both Stanford, with its proximity to Silicon Valley, and TAU are training their best-and-brightest to make contributions to our collective “start-up nations.” Both institutions already work closely on practical applications with corporate giants Google, Apple, IBM, Intel, Ford, Infosys, and Tata.

As it happened, the lockdowns precipitated by the pandemic provided dramatic illustrations of the multi-faceted value of the overlap and integration of digital technologies with individual and collective physical activities. As direct physical contact, mass transit, large gatherings, and in-person shopping became suspects in virus transmission, more and more activities moved online. Some important projects that the TAU-Stanford research team was focused on prior to the pandemic leapfrogged to the fore: remote health sensors using cellphones and big data; early detection of infectious diseases; the future of the office-as-workplace; and epidemic modeling using AI. Such project collaborations will provide the basis for developing vital new infrastructure.

The partnerships highlighted here illustrate the diversity of social innovations underway between key Israeli and Bay Area universities. A companion grantee story, US-Israel Partnerships: Accelerating medical innovation, provides details of Koret’s current support for Bay Area-Israeli partnerships focusing on medical research, from investigating neurodegenerative diseases to which Jewish populations seem disproportionately susceptible, to innovating major advances in patient care and personalized medicine.