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 future of humanity.
Apr 22, 2020... As he discusses in this video, Prof. Sarel Fleishman of the Department of Biomolecular Sciences is supporting multiple lines of coronavirus research at Weizmann – including his own.
May 04, 2020... In this video, Profs. Ron Milo and Uri Alon succinctly and clearly explain their “intermittent work” strategy for restarting the economy without triggering a new wave of COVID infections.
Jun 02, 2020... In this special update from his home in New York City, CEO Dave Doneson discusses the Weizmann Institute’s remarkable coronavirus response. Dave shares how the Institute has rapidly shifted its focus to address the pandemic, transforming into one of the world’s leading hubs of COVID-19 research. Weizmann scientists are fighting this disease on a variety of fronts, offering hope and optimism for us all.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/nasa-s-next-destination/
May 14, 2020...
REHOVOT, ISRAEL—May 14, 2020—An incredibly accurate clock planned by the Weizmann Institute of Science, the Israel Space Agency (ISA), and an Israeli company could be on its way to Neptune’s largest moon in 2026.
If life does exist outside of Earth in our Solar System, it could be hiding in subterranean oceans flowing under the surface of icy moons. One of the most promising candidates for such an underground liquid body is Triton – aptly named for the son of the sea god Neptune, the planet around which it orbits. Triton, Neptune’s largest moon, some 4.5 billion km (2.8 million miles) away, is an oddity: it orbits in the opposite direction from all of Neptune’s other moons. Some think this points to an origin outside of our Solar System: the moon may be an intruder that was trapped long ago by Neptune’s gravitational field.
May 17, 2020... Dr. Nir London discusses the “COVID Moonshot” project in this videoconference. The global initiative, which currently includes nine partners, aims to develop a “cheap and safe” antiviral treatment for COVID on a much faster timeline than traditional drug discovery.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/feature-stories/using-our-senses-to-fight-coronavirus/
Jun 10, 2020...
Just as COVID-19 is still advancing, so is the research of Weizmann Institute scientists as they develop ways to identify, predict, treat, and prevent the illness. One particularly innovative researcher is Prof. Noam Sobel.
A neurobiologist who is a world leader in olfaction research, Prof. Sobel works in the Weizmann tradition of following his curiosity as he harnesses the sense of smell to fight COVID. His previous studies have shown that our olfactory system has powers that many of us would never have imagined; he has used the sense of smell – our most ancient sense – to quantify the smell of fear; shed light on social miscues in autism and diagnose the condition; help locked-in, vegetative patients communicate; reveal subconscious reactions to the opposite sex; and much more.
Jun 12, 2020...
The list of sophisticated eavesdropping techniques has grown steadily over years: wiretaps, hacked phones, bugs in the wall—even bouncing lasers off of a building's glass to pick up conversations inside. Now add another tool for audio spies: Any light bulb in a room that might be visible from a window.
Researchers from Israeli's Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the Weizmann Institute of Science today revealed a new technique for long-distance eavesdropping they call “lamphone.” They say it allows anyone with a laptop and less than a thousand dollars of equipment—just a telescope and a $400 electro-optical sensor—to listen in on any sounds in a room that’s hundreds of feet away in real-time, simply by observing the minuscule vibrations those sounds create on the glass surface of a light bulb inside. By measuring the tiny changes in light output from the bulb that those vibrations cause, the researchers show that a spy can pick up sound clearly enough to discern the contents of conversations or even recognize a piece of music.
Jun 03, 2020...
Israeli government investment arm the Israel Innovation Authority (IIA) has approved the establishment of the CRISPR-IL consortium, which will focus on the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and CRISPR technologies to develop advanced computational tools for genome editing, IIA announced Wednesday.
The consortium will be allocated with a total of NIS 36 million (approximately $10.36 million) for a period of 18 months, with an option to extend operations for an additional 18 months.
Aug 24, 2020... In this video, Prof. Yonina Eldar (Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics; Head, Biomedical Engineering & Signal Processing Center) discusses her development of novel methods for diagnosing COVID.
Sep 18, 2020... CIEQSFTTLFACQTAAEIWRAFGYTVKIMVDNGNCRLHVC: these forty letters are a set of instructions for building a sophisticated medical device designed to recognize the flu virus in your body. The device latches onto the virus and deactivates the part of it that breaks into your cells. It is impossibly tiny—smaller than the virus on which it operates—and it can be manufactured, in tremendous quantities, by your own cells. It’s a protein.