Google.org, a Google fund aimed at supporting data based solutions for some of humanity’s greatest challenges, has awarded a competitive grant to Tel Aviv University for high-impact research employing Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to combat COVID-19.

This step is one of many taken by Google in its ongoing effort to contribute to the global battle against the pandemic while also promoting its “AI for Social Good” research program — headed by, among others, Prof. Yossi Matias, Vice President at Google and CEO of the Research and Development Center at Google Israel. The Israeli center is a key player in Google’s endeavors to combat COVID-19 and help protect populations faced with natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, and wildfires.

The grant is being awarded to the AI and Data Science Center at Tel Aviv University for research employing AI techniques and advanced statistical methods to combat COVID-19. Using data from government ministries (Health, Transport, etc.) and the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, the researchers intend to build an accurate high-resolution model of the spread of the pandemic and then use it to plan and test various methods for stopping the pandemic. This interdisciplinary research brings together TAU researchers from the School of Public Health, the Department of Statistics and Operations Research, the Blavatnik School of Computer Science, the School of Electrical Engineering, and the Gertner Institute for Epidemiology and Health Policy Research.

“Tel Aviv University is proud that Google has chosen to award this significant grant to the AI and Data Science Center, in order to expand COVID-19 research in Israel,” said Prof. Meir Feder, Head of TAU’s AI and Data Science Center. “This grant will support the development of AI and Reinforcement Learning based tools for planning and examining the effects of different steps on the spread of the pandemic. The research findings will be used by decision-makers in their efforts to establish policies for stopping the pandemic.”