FAU's Worldwide Reach

Building on the effort to become the preeminent research institution in the Southeast, FAU is rapidly expanding its global reach across Israel, from the top of Mount Carmel to Jerusalem to the Mediterranean Sea and beyond.

One example is the exchange of fourth-year medical students between FAU’s Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine and the Technion Israel Institute of Technology. This exchange includes students rotating at Boca Raton Regional Hospital as acting interns in internal medicine and general surgery, as well as students doing similar rotations at Technion.

Anton Post, Ph.D., associate vice president for corporate and international relations, recently returned from Israel, where he lay the groundwork for continued fruitful collaborations and exchanges of Israeli and FAU faculty, institutional leaders, researchers and students.

While new collaborations are flourishing, the partnership between FAU and Israel began more than 20 years ago when Florida enacted a law creating “linkage institutes” for postsecondary institutions and foreign countries. FAU and Broward College partnered with Israel to create the Florida-Israel Institute.

When FAU President John Kelly, Ph.D., and Governor Rick Scott visited Israel in December 2017, they decided to rev up the institute and broaden FAU’s network. That’s when they turned to Post, formerly with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for 22 years, to expand on existing connections with academic and funding institutions.

Exploring Opportunity

A few months later, Post leveraged FAU research strengths by bringing Randy Blakely, Ph.D., director of the FAU Brain Institute, and Jason Hallstrom, Ph.D., director of the Institute for Sensing and Embedded Network Systems Engineering, to Israel to meet their counterparts.

In seminars with faculty and students and one-on-one meetings with faculty and researchers at Hadassah Medical School, the Technion Israel Institute of Technology, the Weizmann Institute of Science and other leading centers of medical education in Israel, Blakely and Hallstrom described their endeavors and explained why FAU is the go-to university for research and post-doctoral work. The group also explored opportunities for joint programs related to translational research in which both countries could be stakeholders in moving laboratory research achievements into the commercial marketplace as products, Blakely said.

“It was a very successful visit, with a lot of mutual appreciation and understanding of the potential,” Post said. “Now we have to think about how to bring that potential to fruition.”

Post returned with a fully executed memo of understanding with Hebrew University and the Technion, and he put external funding mechanisms in place for additional exchanges between Israel and FAU.

One future initiative will be small, joint workshops involving 10 to 12 scientists — six from each country — who will brainstorm answers to major questions in their fields. The format will create a bottoms-up, synergistic enthusiasm for collaborative efforts that will benefit both sides as well as medical research as a whole.

“In the United States, we can be more practical with our research approach, whereas in Israel there tends to be an emphasis on the importance of theoretical considerations,” Post said. “That’s a very nice complementarity.”

The International Center for Emergency Management

The FAU International Center for Emergency Management (ICEM) partners with The Chaim Sheba Medical Center in Israel to train specialists in emergency management and leadership in crisis and disaster management for public safety, public health, first responders, law enforcement, fire rescue and medical professionals in South Florida.

In addition:

• Elhanan Bar-On, M.D., director of Sheba’s Center for Disaster Medicine and Humanitarian Response, recently led a week-long intensive training session at FAU.

• Yitshak Kreiss, M.D., director general of Sheba Medical Center, honorary president of FAU’s center and former surgeon general of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), led a lecture on leadership in times of crisis. Kreiss also has affiliate professor appointments in both the FAU College of Business and the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine.

• The chief nursing officer and two nurses from the IDF Medical Corps trained more than 70 regional nurses in emergency management at FAU.

“The World Health Organization ranks the Israelis No. 1 in the world in deployment of field hospitals, rescue missions and crisis response and recovery,” said Rebekah Dickinson, chief program officer of the FAU center. “Our partnership with Sheba allows us to tap into that expertise.” 

Moving forward, FAU’s international center will hold biannual training sessions with the Israelis, focusing on first response, search and rescue and post-traumatic stress disorder healthcare. Dickinson is designing a mission to Israel focused on healthcare and disaster management for FAU students, academic leaders and community supporters.

The Elasmobranch Collaborative Research Program

Stephen Kajiura, Ph.D., director of FAU’s Elasmobranch Research Laboratory in the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, is leading a joint program with the University of Haifa to study shark distribution and movements in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, where the animals have begun to proliferate.

The researchers will track sharks with data loggers to learn the environmental conditions they prefer and predict where they will be found in greatest abundance. The researchers will also test the sensory capabilities of sharks, which can detect electrical signals and smell minute quantities of chemicals in the water. One objective of the research will be to use these sensory cues to develop repellents that can keep sharks away from designated areas.

Kajiura will teach a graduate-level course on the biology of sharks at the University of Haifa’s Leon H. Charney School of Marine Science. In addition, an exchange program will allow graduate students from each university to conduct research at the reciprocal institution.

Enthusiastic Support

Being recognized as a premier research university matters for at least two reasons. First, such high regard attracts top-notch faculty and students, thus energizing research opportunities and supporting world-class academics. Second, the Florida Legislature and the State University System’s Board of Governors guarantee millions of dollars to Florida’s top-performing schools.

Boca Raton’s Jewish community is already showing enthusiastic support for the newly revived Florida-Israel Institute. “They’re very proud of the university. We’re trying to bring together Israel, FAU and the Boca Raton community to build a triangle of positive relationships — cultural, political, academic, all of it,” Post said. “This is a partnership that’s going to lift all our boats.”