At least a good few decades have passed since the world’s leading players begun paying attention to Israeli technology when it comes to gaining a competitive edge. To access the top engineers and scientists, businesses from around the world have been lining up to open research centers and R&D departments in Israel. Although a number of reasons contributed to this success, it can be said with a high degree of certainty that higher education institutions played a substantial part in it. In fact, Israeli universities were at the forefront of many cutting-edge technologies before they were widely adopted.

In recent years, AI research has become a next big thing and is getting traction among technology companies. It appears that out of all the universities in Europe, Israeli Technion Institute of Technology has become a leader in this specific field. In fact, it has been ranked No. 1 in Europe for AI research by the international CSRankings in its latest report.

The university is actively expanding its initiatives and partnerships with various institutions around the world. Technion continues to be active in brining researchers and students to further all areas of AI research, as Technion’s Centre for Artificial Intelligence (Tech.AI) is in the process of creating its own AI community.

The university “continues to establish its position as the top research institution in Israel and Europe in the key fields of artificial intelligence,” says Professor Shie Mannor, director of Tech.AI at the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

The researchers pursue the application of cutting-edge artificial intelligence tools and methodologies across a wide range of disciplines, including but not limited to data science, civil engineering and medical research.

There are currently about 150 experts in AI-related fields: autonomous vehicles, health and medicine, industrial robotics, smart cities, cybersecurity, natural language processing, FinTech, human-machine interaction, and others.

Professor Assaf Schuster, another leader of the Tech.AI initiative from the Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science, says, “Tech.AI operates around the clock and through a variety of channels and activities to deepen Technion education that promotes AI research and its application in all faculties and research centres and to provide students and researchers dealing in all AI fields with the most supportive environment.”

Tech.AI, which brings together all of the Technion’s activities in the field of artificial intelligence related to medicine and biology, gives it a leading position in the world, according to Professor Shai Shen-Orr, who is also the project’s leader from the Technion’s Rappaport Faculty of Medicine.