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.
Jun 01, 2020...
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the public last week to “return to normalcy, get a cup of coffee, a glass of beer… have fun” – and that is what most Israelis did.
But that return to normalcy appears to have runneth over, and the cup is apparently no longer half full.
As Israelis declined to comply with social-distancing directives, children returned to school, restaurants opened, and the number of people screened for the novel coronavirus dropped, the country quickly started to see a surge in active cases of SARS-CoV-2.
May 13, 2020...
A group of experts advising Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the national response to the coronavirus pandemic found a correlation between one's income and education level and the chance they would contract coronavirus, N12 reported Wednesday.
The report published on Tuesday by the team headed by Professor Eli Waxman of the Weizmann Institute of Science suggested people with lower levels of income and education are more likely to contract the virus. According to N12, the team said people with higher education were less likely to contract the disease, even if their income level was low.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/covid-19-is-all-about-the-curve/
Apr 26, 2020... Prof. Doron Lancet of the Department of Molecular Genetics at the Weizmann Institute of Science says that the Covid-19 curve has developed in the same trajectory in many countries regardless of their lockdown policies. By his reckoning, the significant statistic is not the number of cases but the pattern of development, which is similar in every country including Israel and is currently falling. According to Lancet, it was not the lockdown that led to the change in direction in Israel, or at least not just the lockdown, but something natural in the development of the disease and he insists that a comparative analysis proves this. By this logic, even the complete relaxation of the lockdown (although this is not necessarily what he recommends) would not result in the kind of figures being seen in Italy or New York.
May 08, 2020...
It started with a tweet. Alpha Lee, co-founder and chief scientific officer of machine-learning company PostEra, read on Twitter that Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron facility, had identified a set of chemical fragments that attach to an important coronavirus protein.
Lee wondered if his company, formed just six months earlier, could help connect the dots from fragments to viable drugs to fight COVID-19. PostEra uses AI algorithms to map routes for drug synthesis to speed the drug discovery process. But to do so, they would need some design ideas. So Lee asked the Internet.
Mar 27, 2020...
Israeli and British scientist are pioneering a revolutionary method of scientific research that could see a candidate for an anti-coronavirus drug emerge “within weeks.”
The teams at the Weizmann Institute for Science in Israel and the Diamond Light Source laboratory in Oxfordshire, which are together pioneering an “open” and fast research method, outlined their current findings and research plans in a discussion hosted by Weizmann UK on Thursday.
May 27, 2020...
Gallons of Israeli blood will be packed in liquid nitrogen on Monday and rushed to America’s national health agency, in the hope it will help to solve some of the biggest mysteries of the coronavirus.
Daniel Douek, the scientist who collected the thousands of samples, conducted an initial analysis and prepared them for shipment, said that he is “extremely excited” that they are leaving for the US.
May 11, 2020... Researchers in Israel have succeeded in determining the biological processes that characterize seriously ill COVID-19 patients, as compared to those who are only mildly affected. The researchers, headed by Prof. Ido Amit from the Department of Immunology at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, examined the differences between those who were seriously ill and lightly ill. They based their analysis partly on the virus’ activity at the single cell level.
May 09, 2020...
Collecting data and maintaining privacy do not have to rule each other out, according to computer scientist Shafi Goldwasser.
Goldwasser, 61, a professor at MIT, UC Berkeley, and Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, is a Turing Award and Gödel Prize laureate. She is also the co-founder and chief scientist at Duality Technologies Inc., a Tel Aviv and Maplewood, New Jersey-based startup that develops technologies for sharing and analyzing encrypted and anonymized data.
Apr 05, 2020...
Is your sense of smell suddenly not working very well? Not to panic you, but sudden olfactory loss has emerged as a significant symptom in about 60 percent of COVID-19 patients.
In fact, in France, people reporting a dramatic drop-off in their ability to smell are automatically assumed coronavirus-positive.
Based on this data, Weizmann Institute scientists, in collaboration with Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, developed SmellTracker – an online platform that enables self-monitoring of smell in order to detect early signs of COVID-19.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/can-a-two-day-workweek-eradicate-coronavirus/
Apr 01, 2020...
Researchers at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science have developed a new model for containing the spread of Covid-19 while also maintaining economic activity. The key, they say, is a two-day workweek.
According to Professor Uri Alon, a systems biologist, his doctoral students Omer Karin and Yael Korem, and computer engineer Boaz Dudovich, a weekly cycle of two workdays followed by five days of lockdown can provide a good trade-off between minimizing the health impact of coronavirus and keeping the economy healthy. Ultimately, the researchers said, this model can help eradicate the virus.
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