The Hebrew University of Jerusalem has partnered with the University of Illinois to grant $200,000 to four new research and development teams focusing on agriculture and medicine, in order to drive innovation in these fields.
The teams will research topics such as making crops more efficient in photosynthesis, preventing and combating antibiotic-resistant diseases, preventing chronic tissue damage and improving cell therapy – and even making healthy foods taste better.
Each team to receive the money was required to have researchers from both Hebrew U and one of the universities in the U of I system, and their research needed to be relevant to the agricultural, medical, artificial intelligence or data science fields.
The winning projects included: "Tolerance of photosynthesis to heat (TOP) project: Elucidating the regulatory network for photosynthesis protein stability and abundance," "Fighting ESKAPE pathogens using random antimicrobial peptide mixture in preclinical models of human infectious diseases," "Reconstituting the microenvironment of chronic tissue injury to improve cell therapy" and "Bitterness suppression for improving personalized nutrition."
The new teams are funded by the U of I system’s Office of the Vice President for Economic Development and Innovation and Hebrew U's International Office in conjunction with Israel’s Authority for R&D, according to HU.