High-profile COVID-19 vaccination campaigns have put a spotlight on the organization and delivery of vaccination services in the European Union. While there are particular challenges to mass COVID-19 vaccinations, many of the challenges are also common to routine vaccination programs, such as communication, availability of services, and adequate training of health professionals. BIU epidemiologist co-leads EU initiative to improve access to MMR and HPV vaccines. Read More.

Sixteen Bar-Ilan University researchers have been awarded this year’s Rector’s Prize for Scientific Innovation in recognition of their research achievements in 2021. The ceremony was held on Wednesday, June 23 on the BIU campus. The recipients were selected by two committees headed by the BIU Rector, Prof. Amnon Albeck. Read More.

Holding a conversation in a noisy environment can be challenging, especially when there are multiple people speaking at once or loud music playing in the background. Now a new study carried out by Israeli researchers from Bar-Ilan University shows exactly how the brain processes conversations that are happening simultaneously. Read More.

Prof. Orna Sasson-Levy from Bar-Ilan University’s Faculty of Social Sciences, and advisor to the BIU President on gender equity, notes that women today figure prominently among Israeli university students and graduates. However, they are underrepresented among academic faculty (especially in the sciences), among the higher academic ranks, and in academic management. Read More.

A groundbreaking treatment developed by an Israeli team might offer a cure against multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer. “We are reprogramming another type of the immune system’s cells called T-cells in order to teach them to fight the cancer inside the blood of the patient,” said Prof. Cyrille Cohen, head of the Immunotherapy Laboratory at Bar-Ilan University. Read More.

People who received both doses of the Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine seem to be protected from the disease even after prolonged exposure to infected family members. This encouraging news comes from infectious disease experts at Israel’s Ziv Medical Center and affiliated-BIU School of Medicine, both located in Safed (Tzfat). Read More.

What role can music play in enhancing group cohesion and influencing performance? In May 2020, Bar-Ilan University researchers (a collaboration between social-neuroscientists and scholars from the Department of Music) reported that while members of a group drum together, aspects of their heart function actually synchronized. The findings of the study were published in the journal, Scientific Reports. The article, Physiological and Behavioral Synchrony Predict Group Cohesion and Performance, was downloaded more than 4,100 times, placing it as one of the journal’s top 100 downloaded neuroscience papers in 2020. Read More.

Bar-Ilan University’s faculty members and students are appointed to prestigious positions or win awards every year. While these are not their only achievements, these accolades enhance their personal success while adding prestige to the university, and we are incredibly proud of their accomplishments. This article lists some of the faculty members and staff who have been rewarded over the past few months. Read More.

Yakir Elazari is a graduate student in a special program for IDF reserve officers in Political Studies, and Military and Security Studies at Bar-Ilan University. Since his high school days, Yakir has been interested in politics and the military, and immediately following his IDF service, he realized that this was the field that he wanted to study. Yakir’s Bachelor’s degree is also in the field of government and politics. Read More.

Although climate change will certainly bring warmer conditions, it will also bring greater shifts in global weather patterns – and the Red Sea may be cooling unlike other coral reef habitats around the world. This phenomenon led scientists from the Interuniversity Institute for Marine Science in Eilat and Bar-Ilan University to study the effects of cooling on corals in the Gulf of Aqaba. The researchers found that winters even 1°C cooler than the current average could be stressful for corals. Read More.