About Us
Founded in 1944, the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science develops philanthropic support for the Weizmann Institute in Israel, and advances its mission of science for the benefit of humanity.
Apr 01, 2020...
JERUSALEM — Teams of epidemiologists and computer scientists on three continents have started mass population surveys to try to get ahead of the coronavirus and ensure that scarce diagnostic tests, and even scarcer ventilators, are sent where they can do the most good.
More than two million people in Britain and 150,000 Israelis have already completed simple questionnaires, and many are updating their answers daily. Analysts of the data — including symptoms of Covid-19 and test results, as well as risk factors and demographics — say they have been able to identify incipient outbreaks days ahead of the authorities.
Mar 25, 2020... Israel is suffering a shortage of coronavirus tests, and the Weizmann Institute – working with the Ministry of Health – has transformed scientific facilities into medical facilities in order to conduct more testing. Institute leadership expects that the labs should be able to run 4,000 tests per day.
Mar 23, 2020... Dr. Nir London of the Weizmann Institute’s Department of Organic Chemistry explains his lab’s approach to fighting the coronavirus: creating a novel antiviral treatment. After identifying candidates for an antibody, he and his team are designing second-generation compounds that will go to colleagues in Germany and the U.K. for testing against the virus. Dr. London emphasizes the fact that this is open science: research that is freely available to all, for the benefit of everyone.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/two-steps-ahead-of-the-coronavirus/
Mar 22, 2020... REHOVOT, ISRAEL—March 22, 2020—A method for monitoring, identifying, and predicting where the coronavirus will spread has attracted considerable international interest. It was initiated and developed by scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science, in collaboration with researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Clalit Health Services and in coordination with Israel’s Ministry of Health. Other governments have now begun to implement the method, which is based on questionnaires for the general public and analysis of the data obtained from them. The questionnaires track the development of virus-induced symptoms, and the analysis relies on Big Data algorithms and artificial intelligence. Viral spread occurs in clusters of infection; thus, early identification of clusters may facilitate various actions aimed at slowing down the spread of the virus.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/coronavirus-by-the-numbers/
Mar 31, 2020... REHOVOT, ISRAEL—March 31, 2020—Numerical data sometimes reveal facts that are otherwise concealed within an onslaught of information from an overwhelming number of sources. Prof. Ron Milo and research student Yinon Bar-On of the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, together with American colleagues Prof. Rob Phillips of Caltech and Dr. Avi Flamholz of the University of California, Berkeley, have now employed an original research method to organize the flood of coronavirus information in an orderly framework.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/intermittent-lockdown/
Mar 31, 2020... REHOVOT, ISRAEL—March 31, 2020—Think of dieting. You can fast for two months and lose weight, but you will probably die. Even if you survive, you will quickly gain weight again. Similarly, a two-month lockdown will suppress the coronavirus, but it will kill the economy. Lockdown will push hundreds of millions of people globally into unemployment and poverty. Many sectors of the economy will collapse. At the end of each lockdown, remaining patients will cause a resurge in the epidemic, forcing another lockdown.
Mar 25, 2020... In this videoconference hosted by Weizmann Canada, Prof. Sarel Fleishman of the Weizmann Institute’s Department of Biomolecular Sciences gives a progress report on his lab’s coronavirus research. The coronavirus is so named because it is covered in “spikes” that look like the sun’s corona; Prof. Fleishman seeks to bind and neutralize the spike proteins, thus stopping the virus.
Mar 25, 2020... In just one week, Profs. Ido Amit and Eran Elinav, both of the Department of Immunology, have built one of the highest-tech labs in the world. They developed a new type of PCR testing that is tremendously fast: if current capabilities test one patient at a time, the new method can test all of Israel simultaneously. The scientists intend to make their method available to anyone who needs it.
Mar 24, 2020... “Vaccination is life.” Weizmann scientists give us a quick history lesson on the vaccine. Dr. Ziv Shulman, Prof Ruth Arnon, and Prof. Ido Amit explain humankind’s long knowledge of the immune system, Edward Jenner’s discovery of the vaccine, and the public-health implications of vaccination.
Jun 01, 2020...
A joint project by the Jewish Agency for Israel, the Weizmann Institute of Science and healthcare provider Clalit has been to teach the best practices in the fight against coronavirus to Jewish and non-Jewish organizations, communities and medical staffs abroad.
As the peak of the outbreak seems to have come and gone in most of the Western world, the general opinion is that Israel stood the test well. Specifically, the number of deaths was minimized compared to many other countries: as reported by the AFP, with 284 patients who succumbed to COVID-19, the Israel has registered a number of victims equivalent to 31 per million inhabitants, compared with around 310 deaths per million (10 times as many) in the US, about 560 in the UK and 427 in France.
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